Ep. 361: AEW's Revolution 2020 (Part 1)

It's the Lapsed Fan Wrestling podcast with Jack and carn Seo and JP Sorrows.
It's the LAPS Fans get all my ears and professional wrestling like you never seen
anything like it. And it's the LAPS fan name by the one in the
ring to get about the slatter with the real King of swing with the bell
goes name the kick like me, throne in the corner, bets rash like
stay even Jerry King, you could say, off the crown nodding his head
like hiss d low brown, which you get low down fro go even high
up, flip you on your head, but you know cool driver, you
speaking more knowledge and dragon spits fire keep you more shocked than a head tree
tire drop a more truth than the kind of snupber less you with a cooking
mut roddy pipper a check a JP be like j y D drop the cupcakes
ago the grain bar means the best podcast fun start to close, rif y'all
bet a pose tlf Hopper comes roaring back in twenty twenty three after a long
long slumber, and my God Boss was the solar system jolted awake by this
selection. So true you know nothing animates the solar system quite like the discussion
of what does and doesn't belong. But the beauty of the hopper is it
pushes us into areas that are beyond our comfort zone. And we've always been
deeply satisfied with the results as folks have chosen things that we never would have
thought of, and we learned a whole lot about an aspect of the business
or the participants in it that we didn't expect to. And I think aw
Revolution twenty twenty will be no exception. As gay or long time supporter puts
it on the table this week, I agree. I also you know,
I also think too that if anything too, these shows that are out of
the comfort zone, that are out of the timeline, the the lapsed timeline
it What it also does too is it's always a reminder, much like the
monthly calls, but at least for for those who don't have the balls and
nut up on Patreon, these are this is the time that we can remind
everybody why it used to be better. I think so. I think so,
And I think one of the things that's key is that we don't come
in with that kind with those blinders on. I mean, you always make
the point. It's hilarious how people expect you to always hate a W.
I know, I'm actually you know, when you talk about it, that's
not a reasonable expectation. I'm more or less a fan, you know,
especially from this period. I wouldn't say I'm as much of a fan,
although I do go, you know, I go to Did's apartment to go
see to watch the shows every now and again, the AW pay per views
because he always gets them, like I watched the one from Wembley a couple
of weeks ago. Yes, that's not that's not someone who you know puts
up the Satanic cross when AW comes up. Yeah, no, I don't,
I don't. I don't hate it. But it's funny. I I
gone, I'm like, no, I don't. I don't hate it.
There's there's elements of it that I do hate Young Fucks and Kenny Omega,
but you know, there are other elements of it that I think You're fine,
totally fine. That's always the identity thing with AW is it's like the
gatekeepers to a W want you to think that unless you love Kenny Omega on
Young Bucks, you can't love AW or can't like AW and as time is
gone, it's become very clear that while they are very influential parts of the
show, that they are about ten percent of a w in terms of viewing
experience. Although I'll tell you what I'm you know, this is one of
those situations where I'm you know, I'm not gonna I don't. I don't
that. If anything, it's evidence that I don't hate to hate. I
gotta say this is that this in this show the best Young Bucks match I've
ever seen, absolutely, and I actually not not even to the point where
it's like it still sucks, Like I actually thought this was a great match.
I thought I was to hear you say that, not because I was
hoping you'd love it, but because this is something that I really actually got
excited about when Gabe selected the show for the Hoppers to see if you would
coming in cold, coming in with no idea of where this match has been
placed in the pantheon of US tag team wrestling matches, if it struck you
with something special, and I'd love just to get your thoughts before we jump
in and before we sort of color it with the context. I'm gonna lay
down here and get into our deep dive of it. What did you think
of this match? Because this is you know, Moxley winning the title for
the first time is a significant part of the show, and we'll get to
that, but really the calling card of this show is this, this tag
match show Mega and Adam Page versus the Young Bucks. Just what washes over
you as a as a lapsed fan on watching this for the first time,
Well, what it was. Number one was that, you know, I
go in obviously expecting any young fuck match to be to be flippy, floppy,
horseshit and a million you know, super kicks to just you know and
all that shit. Any end. What I liked was that this was more
like a wrestling match. This was like a real it felt It felt as
old school as you can yet in the modern age of a wrestling match.
And that's one thing. Not to interrupt your trend of thought. There no,
no, that's one thing about the Young Bucks. It's like, yeah,
they are all of the things you said derisively about them. If you
don't include all of the matches where they are the absolute opposite, it's like
people can't accept that they can do the state of the art high flying.
And if you don't like that, that's fine, but they also can do
whatever tag team style that you think is worthy. It's just you don't watch
those matches, right, You don't see those highlights. People don't make Twitter
fights about those matches. And I think, to me, one of the
things that I actually, you know, at least again watching it completely cold
and again, I've only watched it one time, and I took my notes
and all that, and that's that's pretty much. That's all I've ever seen
in this match. I've never gone back. I didn't go back and rewatch
it again. What I thought was that even even the more high flying,
flippy floppy shit that they did do in this because it certainly wasn't immune to
that, but it wasn't the kind of flippy floppy shit where I am sitting
there wondering, wait a minute, did that really? Did that cause more
impact? Did that cause more pain to me? The stuff, the more
high risk aerial stuff that they did, for the most part, I'm not
going to say its one hundred percent again, I don't remember completely, but
it was it was more grounded. It was more like a okay that actually
I could see that being more hurtful, you know, that could actually have
more impact. It wasn't all the let's do eighteen somersaults in the air and
just come down with a simple splash because you know it looks pretty that kind
of shit. It was like everything kind of had a reason for it,
like it was actually about you know, it felt it felt more like a
who's gonna win? You know who, who actually is gonna come out on
top of this? It was much better than I ever would have expected,
and I certainly don't expect it ever like a young fuck match. And for
the Bucks, I mean, they're they're svelt. They're not They're not powerful
looking guys, right right, They're not guys who are ever going to make
any other style work for them. Besides, we use high flying to do
maximum damage. We use high flying because we can do that better than the
guys were in the ring with ye. And you know, it's kind of
like the Rockers in that regard. The Rockers were a bit more bricked up
because of the era. They say they deely mocked up than that, right,
I mean even the Hardies are more fucking bricked up than these than these,
Like they mean they look like they look like sixth graders, but like
one applied carefully though to your point, it's like, it makes actually all
the psychological sense in the world that they would lean so heavily on aerial attacks,
because how else are they going to beat every other tag team in the
world looking like that? You know, right right, they're not submission mavens,
and if they tried to be, you'd laugh that off. They're not
going to be able to do power moves, you'd laugh that off. And
so they understood that about the nature of their physicality early in their career and
built a style where you know, the high flying is flashing and pretty,
but when they do it, you're like, Okay, well that hurt more
than if they didn't do that flip, right that that Yeah, that's a
spike pile driver with a flip instead of just a pile driver. That's a
four or fifty with a guy in a more compromised position than if he was
just sitting there waiting. And I think what you pick up onto this match
two, Boss, and that's very very important is the style doesn't seem so
contrived when the guys they were against are there and ready and in position and
have the yes know their way around, so that there's no moments where it
looks like people are sitting there with their arms around each other waiting for the
dive, right exactly exactly. I agree with that, And you know too,
what I what I also came out of this one thinking was they did
a really good job playing with and and innovating from, innovating from and were
innovating the the the traditional tag team match formula. Because every time I thought
they like, there were at least sessions every time. I would say,
there were maybe five times in this match where I thought I knew where they
were going, and they just made a little twist that made it that much
more interesting. And that's look, guys, I mean that's wrestling today,
you know, That's that's what makes a great match, is sort of downloading
the audience's expectations and knowing sort of, if we do this, it really
will be a twist that people don't expect. You know, we joke about
too many kickouts on finishers and things, and sometimes they do the opposite.
Sometimes they you know, pin them on the first finisher, and that's the
shocking element, right. But I mean, I gotta say, there really
is an art because when you when you tell yourself what's the difference between a
great aw television match and a great pay per view match. What it usually
is is just two or three or even to that. In that sense,
it's just two or three four more degrees of subverting expectations like yep, it's
usually a kick out, but it's also you know, you've seen the sequence
one hundred times, and they know you've seen it one hundred times, and
so they're going to add a little thing in there where it's like, oh
yeah. The only reason that always works is because ABC D always happens in
order. But if C doesn't happen, D doesn't happen right in terms of
like Omega going for the one wing an angel, but an arm is compromised
and so and here's the thing too, that that to me, you know,
you look at a modern day wrestling to have that kind of of wherewithal
to remember that, hey, you know what, I got a bad arm,
I really can't do my move. That to me is is is enough
for me to applaud them at times? Yeah, you know, I think
that's great. It's not it's not sycophantic to point this out about these guys.
I don't understand where the reputation comes from that they don't have great psychology
when you watch any of their greatest matches, and with some exceptions, you
know, I guess like the Luca Brothers, like you know, match they
had was really about car crash table bumps, but that's ladder matches, and
that like twenty percent of their matches are game matches. Like if you want
to judge them on how they do in a straight match, watch their FDR
matches. Watch watch matches that are straight. Don't just watch the brawling weapons
and table crash matches and act like you don't see what they can do when
that's not in play, and that this match has none of that. Yeah,
And I mean again, I don't want to say it's perfect. I'm
just skimming my stuff there. You know, there are two spots that I
can't stand that that I can definitely say, so just so you know I'm
not I'm not all right. There there are two spots in here that I
definitely cannot stand and that are are are are things that are immediately just they
turned me off. So you know that's forward to those. Yeah, because
in a lot of ways, this is considered kind of a perfect match.
So I'd love to see what Yeah, sure, you got it. So
that defines the show again. Moxley, who was really the big acquisition when
AW launched. We were there in Vegas of double or nothing when he came
out. Not a small deal. I still think it's the biggest mistake they
made in the company bringing in Moxley. No, no, give him the
title this soon? Really, yep? Why I think Jericho should have had
at least at least an eighteen month reign, maybe two years before they took
the belt off. Yep, well I give you this. I do remember
feeling like it was a bit premature. Yep. I still think to that
day, to this day, I actually still think that because no one has
had a no one has had a defining rain that makes the belt feel like
something greater than here is a world championship. It just you know, like
nobody has had maybe MJF. Now he's coming up on a year, right,
Yeah yeah, so maybe that, but like again, to really really
drive it in. And I thought Chris Jericho was a great first champion.
I was glad all the shit that kind of went down went down so that
Jericho became the first champion because I thought that was so fitting that a guy
that a legend, you know, an old timer, have the belt.
And I felt he was just kind of getting into his groove by the time
by this show. And I remember when he lost and I was like,
damn, that was a big mistake. Fascinating. He should have kept it
for much, much longer. And what a twist, because you know,
if you had said, all right, you know, we're charting an eighteen
month course with this guy, Let's not forget this is the last pay per
view before the pandemic. In fact, they're advertising shows on this pay per
view that never end up happening, Matches that never end up happening due to
lockdowns, including the first scheduled Blood and Guts match that was supposed to be
in New Jersey that gets canceled at Prudential Center. And you wonder, even
if they did have a plan like that for Jericho Rain, if they get
ansty in the pandemic because those empty arena shows, it was like, we
got to come up with something, you know. I remember there was the
Matt Hardy debut that they were holding on too. There was the late Brodie
Lee his debut that they were holding on too. There were two or three
other big debuts that that happened during the pandemic. Staying came in where it
was like the beginning in the early days, it was like, need to
hold off on these big debuts as long as we can so that when they
come out, there's a crowd there and it seems like a big impactful moment.
Because you remember those early days of the pandemic, people had the naivete
to think that it could be two to three weeks or a month and we'll
be back right right, And so there was this mentality of like, let's
hold our big bullets back, which slowly but surely as the months wore on,
they started having to play these cards, and one of them was eventually
kidding Omega beating John Moxley on Dynamite with a wonderful angle that kind of you
know, had almost like an impact wrestling crossover angle they did for a little
while where returned heel and that was that was ti Arena too. So I
wonder, even if Jericho was to be the champion forever and ever, or
at least for a much longer rain, if when the pandemic hit they would
have just said, no, we gotta do we wet do something to shake
this up. Yeah, it's possible. It's very very possible. It just
it it was like he just it just felt like it was just brand new
and still and I just was like, you gotta have it's gotta be long.
You have to define it with a long, long reign so that when
the guy who beats him eventually it's that much bigger of a deal. Right.
And in the early heady days of a w where you're like, oh,
all of my all of my fantasy rules of thumb could actually come true
with this promotion, Yeah you did. That was one of the things you
told yourself that these guys were going to have long title reigns as a general
rule. And when Moxley won, you're like, oh, they're kind of
they kind of get restless after six months, it turns out. Yeah,
yeah, it just like it was it just yeah. I And it made
me lose a lot of interest in just kind of the thing. I mean,
I listened, I was like I said to myself, I was like,
shit, like you know, I remember when when when when we saw
Moxley come in, I was like, whoa, Like that was it was
a big deal. And shit, they're gonna give him a fucking belt,
but how can they give him the belt right away? And I was like
yeah, I was like, oh, they did it, but it just
didn't. It didn't for me. It didn't mean as much very interesting.
It was kind of like it was nice because, like you said, there
were a bunch of circumstances. Originally supposed to be Adam Paid versus poc aka
Nevel as the first AW World title match, and they were going to put
the world title on a guy that was more representative of like the younger breed,
the older, the veteran guys, the bigger, sort of pre made
stars would have had matches, but it would have been for the title.
And his things shook out with difficulty securing pack and things. They put Jericho
in the mantument with Kenny a Meg on that show. It actually worked nicely
because it was almost like he was that he was that WW generation that was
like more antagonistic towards the spirit of AW. So it was kind of like,
as long as he held the belt, the crowd didn't react to him
this way. They absolutely embraced him. He did a little bit of the
bubbly backstage and that became legendary. R made t shirts off that he was
like chomp beyond. Then he found all these ways to make it very hilarious
and entertaining that he had the belt. So it wasn't like people were hating
the fact that this you know, WWB legend was the first AW champion.
But at the same time, you're right, eighteen months of that would have
been like, can somebody that we identify as like the spirit of AW win
this thing? Instead, Like I felt like there was no there was no
moment where people were like, like people are kind of at with the Roman
reigns now, you know, there was no moment where it was like,
Okay, we get a fucking kill this guy and and you know, and
that would have been you know, they could have kind of built it up
in a way. Maybe there were some guys who came really close and and
and when you said, got to kill this guy, you need the fans
hungering for a title switch, Yes, yes, and you know, the
the to the point where like they could start doing some you know, maybe
some honky tonk man type screw jobs towards the very end of it where where
they're just desperate, you know to to keep you know, he's got his
crew desperate to keep the belt on him. And then finally, you know,
you have just a crazy overbooked match where it's this epic final title turn
for with whoever. I don't know, it could have been anybody, anybody
in his bunch as you know, and Cody actually, in my opinion,
that that to me was a whole fucking thing. Like you know, I
always I always dreamt of that. That that to me was it is that
is that it should have gone from Jericho to Cody. Yeah, well they
already done an angle word he'd never get a title shot as long as a
Jericho held it or like ever what it was? He lost to Jericho in
November that year, and the stipulation was Cody could never get a title matching
and MJF pretending to be Cody's friend at the time cost him that match.
It is deeply apologetic and then turns on him. Thus we get the MJF
Cody match on this show Revolution. Yes, but I remember thinking like the
person as much as John Moxley proved to be a very good champion for them,
and it's basically the MVP of the company because he stepped up. Whenever
See Him Punk Bullshit blows up and there's nobody to turn to for his spot,
and Moxley steps up. He was the interim champion. Just now he
headlined the show they just did in Chicago. With See Him Punk having been
fired, they were able to move his match with Orange Cassidy to the main
event, and it was. It was a totally acceptable and serviceable pay per
view main event because he brought Orange Cassidy up to a main event level.
In twenty twenty, he was Wrestler of the Year, Empty Arena MVP in
terms of, like, you know, defending the championship and away on television
despite no fans that really held up the importance of the title. Still,
he wasn't a guy that was sort of identified with the rebellious spirit of AW
He had it and then he made the jump, but he was a WW
made guy. To me, the guy who should have been Jericho should have
been Paige Omega, somebody that had never been in WWE, right, it
was one of their originals. When it was Roxley was like, well,
is this belt just going to be passed around amongst guys they think are big
enough stars from WWE, you know, and when Punk came in, he
immediately won the belt too, like his Khan basically in the back of his
mind, not interested in put in the belt in anybody that hasn't been in
WWE. Of course, Omega Page got reins, and Omega had a great
reign. It was very angle heavy. His reign was like almost like an
angle as much as it was a rain. But I always thought, you
know, until Kenny Omega is the guy as the world champion, as the
guy that you point to as the champion, as the guy caring aw is
not quite capturing yep, the energy that made it possible in the first place,
that kind of fan pushback against the WWE way of presenting whistling. Yeah,
so, you know, and he got really badly injured during the course
of his title reign, so it was somewhat truncated due to the fact that
he needed to take after he lost the belt. He took several months off
and he was actually much worse for wear than I think anyone appreciated at the
time Omega. So it's not like it was there for the taking, but
at all it's all on the table when you watch this match, the show
of course, lap serendipity being what it is, you watch this show and
it's like Jesus, every single thing that's happened of consequence in aw can be
somewhat traced to this night in terms of what was set in motion and what
wasn't. But we'll look forward to breaking into it. And if you're wondering
why, it's not that Gabe from the Solar System picked the show for the
Hopper because he just you know, thinks all of these things and wants our
opinions on these matches, it's because it is a personal story, yeah,
to tell. And well, of course we'll get to that about this show
and his actual first hand involvement in helping make it a reality in the first
place, yep, which is kind of a perspective we've never had here in
the lapsed fan. Yeah, played a part in making a show happen.
This is a first Yeah, And I think it's you know, and also
you know, say what you will. I mean, it's it's it doesn't
matter, like you know, you get deems. Let let the people if
someone if someone's forking over that kind of fucking cash to pick a show,
I don't care what they pick. Right now. Let let's cater to people
who don't pay anything in pirate the show. That sounds like a better plan.
Yeah, yeah, that's a good idea that we're not you know,
we're not your marks in that regard. We're not going to be caught flat
footed. We will cash checks and the Solar System would be more than happy
to write them. And that's why we are who we are because at the
core are people that understand that only cunts take things for free. That's right,
except read and we don't. We're not cunts. I'll say this.
They take things for free when they're not offered for free. So what we're
excited to break into this thing, and we are obliged to of course before
we commence with business, tip our cap to members of the Solar System who
have made the Patreon pop so much lately in terms of just fulsome discussion,
dialogue, great sort of like things set in motion, particularly due to under
the cinemat. I mean, we've just hit our episode at the boss brought
out both barrels for these things. If you've hesitated to go through the EPN
above tier, now is the time. The files that are sitting there for
both the Wrestler with Mickey Ark and the Wrestler from nineteen seventy four four which
four the Boss had a surprise revisit of that. Of course, we did
review this movie and typical sort of TLF format to launch the Life and Death
of the AWA journey years ago, but it did not. That's not cinemat
treatment. That's not what the Boss does that. You know, we weren't
getting surgical. We were just looking for the essence of the AWA to start
the journey. Boss Man gets into the the actual movie mechanics. Fucking you
know again, if you look, if you go to I'll just say this,
you go to IMDb, all right, and you look up the Wrestler
in nineteen seventy four. You click on the writer a guy named Eugene Gump.
There's nothing there. There's nothing there. You can't find much about this
fucking clown just by searching his name, because usually if you no matter what
it is, even if you fucking put put quotation marks around Eugene Gump when
you do a Google search, mostly comes up as far as Gump. Shit.
So no, but I mean, you tell me, did we did
we produce a life story for this guy? Oh? That's the thing.
It's just like the main show. There is just like there's no telling where
the most money revelations are going to come from when you start turning over stones
on a movie that's wrestling adjacent, which of course is the concept of those
unfamiliar yea under the cinemat features of Wrestler is about wrestling, has some connectivity
to wrestling, and of course the wrestler. But she's with Verne Gandhi and
the whole crew. Lear's, Dusty, Dick Murdock, Billy Robinson. Yeah,
you know, Triple h. They're all in the movie. Michael's is
in it. Yep. Cacular even even a weird, a weird surprise appearance
from Orange Cassidy in the movie. That was surprising. I didn't I completely
miss that the first time around. Uh just you know, you never know
where you're gonna end up. You're thinking, oh my god, this is
a great movie to John dive into because there's wrestler X No, it's about
Gump, his family and his history and his troubled fucking upbringing. I can't
I can't even begin to tell you. And it was just it was a
joy too because when we did it the first time. It was sort of
like a deep dive fashion where we took our copious notes and talked it through.
We didn't watch it along. Yeah, no, no, and so
cinemat fun as we were able to do that. And it's a truithic for
another episode. Watch the fucking just watch all and actually you know what,
and you know, I'll say, we even found We even found Eugene Gump
in the movie. He is in the movie, not much more than Eugene
Gump, but absolutely real findings and absolutely and the Mickey Rocks Show, I
mean, some of the most fun I've had doing cinemats. So much truth
laid Bear in that movie. You know, it's like it crystal, so
much truth laid Bear and Mickey Rourke to absolutely I know, to say nothing
of his life story, which of course is is cracked open for the world
to see on the show, but it laid Bear a rule for me.
It's like, once you start to look too old for long hair, you
are now beginning to illustrate some of the less glamorous realities of the professional Yes,
yes, yes, as much as Jericho still knocks it out of the
park today, the hair is a problem Edge's hair was a problem till he
cut it on our suggestion. The the thing, the one thing I will
say about about about Jericho's hair though, because he's like been playing the aging
rocker. It works for him because it's like it's it's done, it's almost
done. It's it's long to antagonize. Well, you know, it's funny.
I've gone back and forth on that in that I don't really know if
he knows he's playing the aging rocker. I don't think he actually would appreciate
that characterization. But if you just you know, if you just tell yourself
he's doing that, it's great. Yeah, I mean, even if he
isn't, it's kind of like it just makes a very antagonistic character even if
he doesn't know, because it makes it much more true to life, because
dude, you're an aging rocker or is that? Yeah? I mean able
to sing his way to the ring in Wembley, that was a pretty cool
thing he was able to do. Yeah, yeah, with Fausy on hand.
At that's at that pack stadium. So uh so that's there under the
cinemat for you. It's it's really it's really the most amazing, you know,
period of time we've had over there, and I'm sure Boss has got
sick, sick ideas in his mind for well, scary movie season. You
got it, you got it. As the leaves are about to turn.
It's right around the corner. That's all I'm gonna say. Well, preparations
have you made in terms of just the season, not necessarily cinema? Oh,
I've been well. I mean, first of all, we've already visited
and and started looking at Halloween decorations. We've visited the uh, the local
Spirit Halloween store establishment already. That's the first run through, because they do
I do appreciate that they change up there their stuff as the season goes on.
I have had Halloween. It's a lesser extent Christmas. I do like
that soft launch where it's like you're so early that there's no pressure. You're
simply assessing what's new. Yep, yep, that's exactly it. Design,
What are what are some of the marquee items for the year, you know?
And uh, we've I've had two two pumpkin spice lattes thus far.
Despite the fact that the that the weather has gone from the incredibly beautiful chill
crispness that it was days ago to this fucking peak summer heat, that over
day, weekend, weekend kick in the ass, Like, no, not
out of the woods yet, No, it certainly was. Let's say Labor
Day was certainly was just that it was a labor but up here in the
Northeast a couple of days in August, man, it was like, wow,
I can step with the windows open. Yeah, like ac was off
and we just had the windows open for three days straight and it was amazing,
amazing. So I'm I'm, I'm ready. I'm scary. Is so
fun if you don't know under the cinemat for your Patreon dollar, I mean
so many wrestling gimmicks, characters inspired the late Bray Wyatt and Cape Fear.
You know you think about that. Actually that came right to mind when he
passed, and just you know, it's great because Boss always finds these deep
cut wrestling involvements and his favorite scary movies. And he's a real scary movie
offficionado. I can't recommend it highly enough and is somebody that just shows up
with bells on to just take in what he's got, kind of like the
reverse of what we do on the wrestling show. I can't tell you it
must be as much fun for you because I just I just sit there and
I'm saying, I never know where he's gonna take exactly I have I have.
I mean, you know, certainly there are some times where it's just
absolute I kind of know where we're gonna go with it. But and I
know, you know, some of the some of the tricks that I know
are gonna are gonna be right there. But then there are some and let
me tell you this year, the movies, the movies that I have planned
for Scary Movie Season are it's I'm I'm I'm very very excited. I'm very
excited, and I'm very excited to see where it goes because there are some
areas where I we're gonna we're gonna dive into some some wrestling stuff that we've
never even we've never gone before on any format, on any format, stuff
that you probably know more about than I do. I spell Lucca coming,
not Lucha, not yet. We're not doing We're not doing Wrestlemaniac yet.
Not to say something the list, it's definitely on the list. Wrestlemaniac is
on the list. But you know, just some tell me a lot of
fun. Long way of saying, patrion dot com slash the lapsed fan the
destination for wrestling podcast listeners who consider themselves elite and worthy of the most intensive
and exhaustive research you'll find on any wrestling podcast, or really any podcast of
any type. And we've extended to the movie side. If I'm gonna say
to regarding the movie thing, I want to say this I've listened to.
I always go searching for any podcasts on if you look at any podcasts on
the Wrestler, the nineteen seventy four Wrestler, and I don't like too to
my own horn. Actually, the only reason why I'm too to my own
horn is because of how annoying it is. Actually that nobody actually does work
on these shows, on any other on shows. And that goes for you
too, I mean, Jack, that's you too for this, because nobody
fucking does the amount of research for a wrestling show that you do. And
everyone just reviews shit. Everyone just gives their opinion, which is fine.
It's a genre of show. I get it, and there's a lot of
audience for that. But it doesn't it doesn't leave my heart full. It
doesn't satisfy me. No. I want to be able to say, like,
we did a show about a topic, and you put that on the
shelf, man, and that's what you need to know about it because the
book is closed. You know, we very with the exception of circumstances like
this where the hopper challenges us to hate a contemporary stuff. We're talking about
closed books. The beginning, middle, and end of the story is told
and I'll get to Terry Funk in a moment, don't you worry. And
now it's time for us to go to work. And I don't feel satisfied
unless I can tell myself, all right, that show is there and that's
every thing everyone needs to know about it. I'm not saying do stuff can't
come out. I'm not saying great podcasters and researchers and writers can't take it
to another place. I'm obliged, and we're obliged and indebted to the people
that have done so much firsthand reporting on wrestling history. You know, totally.
We were not an interview show, and we rely on people who have
taken the time to build up, you know, a franchise of interviewing wrestlers
about the past and and and actors right as well, got the past.
But it's like, yeah, our genre is like it's all you need to
know. It's the It's like the Encyclopedia entry for the subject to your yes.
Yes, So, I mean, you know, if that's not worth
it to you, then I'm okay. You're you're probably a fucking asshole,
but it's fine, You're You're free to be that. But Patreon dot com
slash the Lapsed Fan is the place to prove yourself worthy. And that's just
the ept here. I mean, we cost to get under the cinemat as
well as our monthly w W pay per view live calls. As again to
your point earlier, we dive into the modern product so we can make the
case that much more strongly when we identify what used to be better about it.
You have that feeling somewhere in your gut. We'll tell you why you
have that feeling, and we'll make it okay. Yes, won't make we
won't make it something that it makes you enemies on Twitter. It's it will
make it okay. And uh just at Payback w B Payback the September show
and Boss deeply enjoyed seth Rowlins versus Nkomras, you would imagine. So that's
there for your for the taking. Do you remember any of that? You're
pretty wind up by that time. I was pretty wind up. I do.
I do remember. I remember enough of it that I was miserable.
So that's there for you, and it will continue to be there for you,
of course. But that's to say nothing of the rustle Mommy A tier,
the fucking note tier, the mother of ultimers. You know you do
that. It's it's very expensive. You do that because you want It's like
you get that badge, right, yes, you get that badge. That's
rarely the value you also get, of course, Mama sorrow watching matches,
selecting back on your living room carpet with your mom making smartness comments in the
back of the room where you're watching wrestling, a reminder of how sort of
infantile and foolish, in juvenile it is to follow pro wrestling in your adulthood.
Gave about that soon as well. Absolutely, And you know if you
can't, if you can't handle hearing the remarks of an old New England lady,
then just go fund yourself. Well, not a party can handle it.
We get it. It's not for everybody. The Moat tier is not
for everybody. We we don't judge anyone who's not in the Moat tier.
We judge people who don't understand why we would pay special deference to the Moat
tier. And when we're on the road, we're thinking to them. When
we're creating exclusive audio, we're thinking of them when we're coming up with plans
to celebrate our tenth year next year, TLFX, you better believe the Moat
tier is going to get way more than the other. Uh sort of a
constituency that we have out there. It's only right, it's only sensible,
it's only I don't know the way the entire world works without exception if you
don't count declining regimes. I should say to the most recent the most recent
Wrestle Mammia that was that was dropped was the War Games match from Fall Brawl
ninety three. Wow, so that must find a navigator through. My mom
hates War Games matches. She's not a fan, not a fan. Does
it all get bloody and wait to find out why? So that's all there.
We've set our piece ad free versions of the show. You get the
deep Dive a day earlier than anybody else. All kinds of stuff deep in
the archives that we've done over the years, connecting the spots and Hall of
Shame and Pain and Fable for three and all kinds of wacky shit and and
a lot of them too now have been you know, we're trying to for
the Patreon folks, we're trying to catalog them and actually have collections up there.
So yes, that's a new option available to us. That it makes,
It makes it easier a little more intuitive and how we display the old
files. But yeah, that's that's kind of the story. That's kind of
the place to be. And it's also just great to to exchange you know,
dialogue with lapsed fan Solar System members. Uh, it's really great to
see people take up things that we bring up on the show that we're not
sure about ye or you know, hear contrary opinions that we might not have
considered about things we say on the show. It's just we can always count
on the Patreon members to fill any gaps that might be remaining in our quest
to say everything that needs to be said. And that's a really powerful things.
That's not something I don't think every podcast enjoys is the security of knowing
that if you do miss something, you've got the smartest listeners in all of
podcasting that I agree, make up on it and present it. They never
cease to amaze me how resourceful they can be in finding things turning over rocks.
I mean, look no further than the long lost episode of Brooke Knows
Best, like totally. You know, you mentioned it, You put it
out in the ether, You consider it because you've exhausted your resources and where
your mind goes to find something. Your rabbit holes have been as you just
figure it's it's it's a lost cause and you say as much, but you
still kind of put it out there with the express intent of somebody saying,
oh really, And of course Kurt stepped forward and found it. You know.
It's just that's a powerful thing, and that's something I think unique to
us that we're going to leverage and we're going to stay erect and hard throughout
the process, Thank you very much. And of course, another thing that
was sort of like built in the cauldron of of TLF patrons was the LAPST
Archive Transcription Service LATS for short. This is something we're always proud to shout
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the tlf archive and it's such a great way to help celebrate tlf X coming
up. It's such a great way to mind the catalog. You know,
they're rippy things that we've said or mentioned that you just can't remember date and
time which show it might have been, because you know, so many of
our tangents have nothing to do with the title of the show. We can
always tell them, but you know, to the entire Solar system, including
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and make it more fulsome and you know, edit things that you know,
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much like a community wiki for the show. But it's not something that we're
just blasting out to everybody. It's something that we really want to be a
precious resource to those who who cared the most about the show. I think
that makes the most sense, and so you want to you want to really
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It's deeply appreciated in that spirit. One of the things that always sort
of comes up and sprouts up organically when we're on the air is T shirt
ideas. Oh yes, and boss, I know the Lapsed Sweatshop has been
working hard over pro wrestlings dot com slash the lapst fan Why don't you tell
us we got the latest and the greatest. Oh absolutely, We've got certainly
some some beautiful, beautiful UH new shirts up from UH I mean, obviously
the TNH shirts hold on trying to pull it up. Here are up and
about. We got certain Hogan brother, We've got the You're talking to Frankie
shirt. Yeah, the only the MVPs. Can I get it. It's
a it's a heavy left, but man, people hit us on Twitter sing
I'm wearing the shirt. I'm going to the show tonight. We'll see how
serious these people are. That sends a charge up our spine, like fuck.
Yes, there's the Brawny Bows shirt, the Red Hook Diner shirt of
course, one that I'm a big fan of and now that I can't wait
to to to wear this one, the the TLF wrestle Pania, Sure,
thank you very much, which is the WrestleMania logo but with wrestle Pania and
TLF with the with the the kind of metallic the metallic look. Then there's
also Giant to Mania, yes, which the thing right from Royal Rumble nineteen
eighty eight, Thank you, Jesse. And then there's the someone send us
a logo of like the TLF logo but with in the way of the of
the WBF logo. You know what kind of the the neon look to it
that they have kind of like the old entrance way from the table. Yeah.
Yeah, so I modified just a little bit, uh and yeah.
So that's up there called the Lapsed Bodybuilding Fan. I forget the guy's actual
name, but we have the Catchatri Chabbada shirt. There we go, and
hundreds more, literally hundreds the Lapsed Army uh you know, from the Bubba
Army, bullshit, Hide the Ball, Pummics Power, the fucking mid Carters
and Zeros shirts. I'll hey, where you know what we're getting towards the
end of the year. So I do expect people to be to be to
be forking out some money for the the the Christmas shirts, the LAPS Hard,
the You'll need It TLF shirt, the uh, the LAPS Fan Home
Alone, the LAPS Fan Christmas Story, LAPS Fan Charlie Brown Christmas type shirt,
so many just it's fucking you know, the beauty of it is just
you know, you think of any idea and just put it on. But
goddamn, it's a beautiful thing to not worry about selling a single. Skew.
Yes, you know the breakthrough was this print on demand technology, this
directed garment printing. That's just like, you know, whatever, man like,
if someone doesn't order it, we're not going to print it, and
so we don't have all this inventory sitting around that we have to convince people
is worth buying and disconnect point. We give it away for twenty five cents.
No, just you want it, We'll print it and come up with
as many designs as you want. And it's a beautiful thing and we urge
you to support it. Also consider a lapsed fan in your life in terms
of a great gift. Another great gift is a cameo which is got back
up and running strongly, boss, And you're getting some boards in the requests
are coming back. We've gotten some from I really appreciate. There's nothing better
to me than the significant other of the recipient. And they're not necessarily sure
what is going on, but they're like, they don't know what this podcast
is. They know their husband loves it. Yeah yeah, and and like
you know, they and then they like something and and they like a lot
of the characters. But you know, feel free to to to just kind
of go off on them. It's like, okay, if you say so,
yeah, give it to dangerous and then they do. That's it.
You know, so many times people have been completely destroyed by by Lapsed Vince
as they want. They want to be flagellated because they're wrestling fans, and
that's basically, you know, destroy their life. And then they want,
you know, then they want uh, you know, then laps Vince wants
to fornicate with the person's wife and paper the deal afterwards is said. That's
right, exactly, not complicated. And also laps Cannon has been has been
created, established characters to interact in ways we wouldn't have imagined, and we're
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so we hidly encourage you to check us out on that platform to deliver a
custom message to please you or to please somebody else. So proud to offer
all those ways. And this of course is the return of the Hopper.
Can't say I know exactly when the Hopper is going to come back. So
we're thankful to the people that made it such a success. First time we've
done it in a long time. And it was great to see that people
had that pent up demand that we were hoping and expecting would be there.
I do feel obliged to mention something that we mentioned way back, kind of
like that first year of the Return of the Hopper, where we said folks
who bid but didn't win would be entered in a pool to get a free
hopper. Pick around the holidays is our gift to the Solar System. That
of course is duty to be, you know, nice to our fans,
but also to encourage them to jump in even if they don't necessarily think they're
going to win, because we're sensitive for the fact that there are deeper pocketed
members of the Solar System than others, deceptively deep pockets out there. We've
come to appreciate that over the years and we love it, but we do
know that it kind of puts the hopper out of the reach of certain folks.
The longer we do, what I will say, the more we cycle
through the big spenders, and then it does come down. The winning amounts
do come down over time, and that's that's a nice thing to see.
But in recognition of how pricy it can get, we are not only putting
people that came up short this time, but also since we made the promise
last year those names as well. Because by the time we decided to do
TNH to launch January of two and twenty three, yes, kind of,
there wasn't really a way to go back over all the people that had come
up short and award a show, which our thought was that would be a
great way to do the first show of the year, right, we'd write
them, give it away and and record it. But in that case,
I mean Jesus Wednesday, January fourth, like we had to do it.
We had to launch on the fourth, so yep, we had to teenage
kind of got in the way. So names last year that bid and didn't
win. Also, we'll be thrown into a pool, will be random.
We'll throw your name in there. Yes, doesn't It doesn't really matter how
every times you bid, we'll throw your name in there once and we'll shake
it up, just like we used to do with the original Hopper back in
the right our names out of hat, draw shows out of a hat we
would do. We have two at times remember those names, we yep,
and then we've have my kid do it. So do keep your eyes peeled
in your ears peeled here to the podcast into our Twitter x account at the
Lapsed Fan and see when we might announce the next opening of the Hopper.
And this brings us to something I think folks might be a little unsure as
to what we might have been cooking up in the kitchen and a brief hiatus
here from the show. And I know a lot of hope swirling around the
passing of Terry Funk and hope that your co chairman could do their one of
a kind treatment of a legacy that more than deserves to be recognized, especially
considering some of the others we've done tribute shows for. And we're here to
tell you that it's happening, what it's happening in TLF fashion, at our
pace and when we feel the story can truly be told. You know,
yes, I know that the emotions run highest the day after and the day
of a passing like this, but that's hardly the time to say, Okay,
the most influential voices, the most influential analytical minds on this guy's career
have spoken, and we know what it know that all happens in the two
weeks after John Pollock at Post Wrestling did a terrific piece that I'd encourage anybody
to check out because he became intimately familiar with Terry Funk over the years covering
the sport in his legacy. Those kinds of things we need to let matriculate.
Even Meltzer, I don't think as of this writing, as of this
recording, I should say, has done his full blown Terry funkle bit and
few new Funk better in terms of writers than Dave Meltzer out of what you
know, the rules of thumb about the business and sort of like detecting where
the business was going before most could see it. That's Terry Funk. I
mean, I think you you you said it perfectly just a couple of minutes
ago, was I we you know, we it's best to have a closed
a closed book. Yes, and I consider that. You know, you
have to have the funeral, you have to have everybody way in on what
he meant and what was most significant. And Terry Funk, I'm here to
tell you, is the most giant career we could ever cover and anybody could
ever cover for sure, not because he was, you know, the biggest
household name in the history of the industry. Not because he was some cultural
icon to a people. But because of the depth and breadth of his experience
in the industry, this guy wrestled more generational talents across more territories, countries,
geographies, eras style than any wrestler who has ever lived. And it's
not even close. I remember reading his book and closing that thing and being
like, did this start with luth Az and end with like Chris Candido and
fucking Big Veto and WCW hardcore matches? Like in every era he only found
a spot, but he found a way to make an impact in the era.
You know, even even in the Attitude era there that motherfucker was.
You know, you would think that by the time the Attitude arra revved up,
you know, Terry Funk wouldn't necessarily need to be contributing. And he
shows up, He finds a way. He's he's somehow always the man for
the moment. Yeah, not in the WrestleMania main event, but kind of
like when the chips are down in the territory and things are kind of fledgling,
things are starting to happen, things are starting to whirr into into something
significant. He's there, He's somewhere around there, contributing in small but big
ways, and just the difference and distinction of who he was as a wrestler
when he beat Jack Briscoe for the End World's Championship in the seventies, Just
to see that Terry Funk, to realize that the one we got came from
there and it's just going to be phenomenal. And so we need your help.
We can't be confident that we can't say all that needs to be said
about Terry Funk without the best listeners and wrestling podcasting telling us where to train
our focus as well. So if you have anything you want to say about
Terry Funk, anything his impact, one memory you have of him, three
memories you have of him, maybe a list of matches that we absolutely shouldn't
pass up in reviewing and and truly appreciating his career, because we're going to
go pretty nuts. Yeah. I mean, this is like a forty year,
fifty year body of work, and it's so diverse in its geographies and
styles and the different eras he intersected with that we really need to be intentional
about hitting representative moments in this guy's life and career, and that takes us
all over the world, and it puts us in all different kinds of rings
and atmospheres. But we'll never no matter how much time we spend, we'll
never match the collective instincts of the Solar system putting all their heads together and
saying do this, this, that, and this and the other. We
might not take every suggestion, but we want them. So send your emails
to the Lapsed Fan at gmail dot com. Tell us why Terry Funk mattered,
Yeah, and what it is Terry Funk did that mattered, and help
us in our mission. We're not exactly sure when we're gonna roll this puppy
out, it's going to be quite soon. We do have at least one
more show in the queue that we're going to bring to you before we start,
The Life and Times of the Funker. But I think I just named
it. What do you think there? It is Life and Times of the
Funker. That's perfect right, very good. Who gives a funk on that
fucking cast? But that also works too. Who gives a funk? We
do because he made you give up, made you care funk you. That's
all there. I mean, that was a T shirt you and by the
time it's over, we're going to realize that he was one of the top
ten greatest professional wrestlers to ever live. Yeah, and we're gonna lay it
bear, and you're not going to have any doubt in your mind by the
time it's over. But let this be the clarity and call. Let this
be the announcement in the public square. Come one, Come all, the
laps Fan at gmail dot com. Terry Funk is our obsession for the next
little while here at Serendipity that he chose until TNH was over to pass away
right away, that little vacuum of we need that mini journey. You know,
I know, I know, I know, and it's coming and it's
coming hard and it's going to take more than one towel to clean up.
So we really hope that you can help us make it what it should be.
That coming to earbuds near you and coming to a nutritional shelf near you
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thumbs up, no doubt. That fucking cast Do you know that? Yes,
Adam Page and Kenny Omega versus the Young Bucks on this show was deemed
by Dave Meltzer to be the best tag team match ever in the United States.
Yeah, I did not reason. I held on to that one.
You know, I value you Dave's opinions. I value Dave's what doesn't historic.
It doesn't matter how that, how that strikes you. It matters which
match is better? All Right, I gotta think about it. I gotta
think. I gotta think. I gotta think, I gotta think. Uh
I would I'll say this right off the top of my head. I would
take any of the any of the the TLC matches from you know, from
from like two thousand and two thousand and one. How interesting here you are
right saying, like decrying a style that relies on those kind of spectacular sequences,
and you're putting it over a match that relies on none of that.
Yeah. Now, I mean in terms of in terms of like and because
I think about it like this, what's a match that I would voluntarily go
back to watch again? That's a fair standard. And that's your unique just
like your subjectivity. Yeah, yes, and I and to me, because
that, to me is where it comes down to whether it comes down to
what am I What do I want to enjoy more? You know, what
am I enjoying more than than just this? And there's a lot honestly,
Uh, I would prefer in some ways to if we're going just by that,
though, then I'd gladly go and watch natural disasters versus Money Incorporated when
they beat them in Worcesters so ridiculous. It can't just be that, right,
It's got to be something significant as well. And those were such groundbreaking
violent matches for me. Those You know, it's funny too. If you
asked the Young Bucks and Omegan Page what the best tag team match ever was,
they probably say something involving the Hearties. At least the Bucks would right
right for Hall of Famers, but the Hearties aren't, even though the Bucks
would yell at you if you said the Hearties on Hall of Famers. But
let's think about something a little more traditional. What would be I'm like going
through I can't even think, you know, I put when we get prompting
thing, I can't think of a goddamn thing. And that's it. I
think that might be a commentary on the fact that there haven't been as many
great tag team matches as singles matches in US wrestling history. That might be
the truth that it is team match, it's unlikely to get the kind of
a chance to be great. Okay, okay, okay, hold on,
though, you know what I would take because I know I've watched a few
times, and I do think it's fucking exciting as shit in a good way.
I would take, you know, uh, Austin and Michael's versus Bulldog
and Owen. Nice nice choice. I thought you were going to go somewhere
else with that. But I think it's a wonderful match and a great example.
Yeah, I was thinking Austin and Triple H first Ben one Jericho Totally,
that's a fucking amazing match, totally new level. So that comes to
mind. I'm not saying I think it's better than this match. I do
kind of when I hear this is the best match ever in US, I'm
like, really, and then you stop and you think, okay, well
what is and then you realize, okay, well I picked that match,
to your point, because of what it meant to me, or at least
my perception of how impactful the match was. But I'm not remembering. I'm
not doing a frame by frame comparison. And Meltzer went through the exercise and
he said, you know, when I think of the two contenders to this,
it's a match with the Bennet Express versus the Fantastics, which he'd always
considered the best American tag team match you ever saw from Chattanooga where the Fantastics
won the NBA US Tag team titles, and a match in Japan Missile and
Kabashi, Kawada and Tawhit which is one of the most celebrated tag team matches
of the nineties. And again his distinction is US. So he's not saying
that it's better than Missile, Kabasha, Kawada, Tawei or any Japanese tag
match, but he did kind of think, what are the things that come
directly to mind, It's the best tag matches I've ever seen, And and
he went back. He watched them closely and determined that this Bucks match versus
Adam Page and Kenny Omega was slightly better. He wrote it had the best
storytelling, but it was not that far ahead of Midnight versus Fantastics in that
realm, but did beat the Al Japan match handily in storytelling. It was
the most spectacular of the three easily. It did not have the sports feel
of the Japan match, but it had a very different and more respectful and
smarter audience than the nWay match and Madras It was the most healthy atmosphere because
while the guys were going too far with the risks. Without a doubt the
audience has appreciated them for what they were doing. There was no con involved.
There was no attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the audience
or pretend, which you can't do in a modern world. There was no
guy along for the ride like kier Taua or Stan Lane, who both brought
something to the matches, but were clearly the least talented of the four.
Part of that is that the person who would be thought of ahead of time
as the guy on that spot in this week's tag match, Adam Page was
the key player in the key story, the story of the matches that in
the end, Page was to outshine the other three by design and win strongly
at the end. But this match not only had more stories and more layers,
but also far more depth to the storytelling. All were close to perfect
for their audiences. All would all the matches. All these matches would transport
into different eras and be among the best matches of the year. Nobody had
an edge in pacing, and none of the three bouts all over thirty minutes,
had a second of downtime or ever dragged or felt too long. All
actually left much shorter than they really were, and the end this week's match
was the best. But saying any of the three weren't among the best tag
matches of all time seems ludicrous to me. Now six stars, wow,
No, I wouldn't go that eye. Yeah, I'd go five, but
that's just because I wouldn't go beyond and a half. You know, it's
not really a disagreement. If it's five or six, it's the highest to
you, you're willing to go four and a half or and a half.
Yeah, yeah, I think of the honestly, I think of the Sean
and Diesel Verse, Hall and Waltman match two. Oh yeah, totally.
I don't think it was. It wasn't as epic as this in terms of
stage in moment. And what about that tag match from two thousand and two
where they did the doubt the SmackDown Tag Championship there? Remember that it was
at Angle and Eddie. Yeah, amazing match, amazing match. Yeah he
would that. I want to include the hardies and more than more than a
half incredible matches people have, you know, they always like I've ever I
mean, you've seen one time the latter match between them and Edging Christian.
Yeah, I mean, if you're gonna go Gaga or the TLC matches and
understand why you would, it's really that match that's the progenitor of it all.
That was the match that really was, like you know, on the
follow up the next night where they got the standing ovation and WW leaned into
how epic the match was instead of tried to look the other way because they
might not have expected it to be that great, which sometimes can kill a
great matches if the follow up isn't there to acknowledge it as great, and
and this match kind of suffered from that. I mean, I don't remember
exactly what they said on the Dynamite after this, but this isn't a match
that excepting the pages of The Observer and kind of the wrestling intelligencia, this
isn't one that echoes. You don't hear are a lot of callbacks to it.
The relationship with a w and the Bucks and stuff got a little weird
after this, so maybe that has a lot to do with it, and
Adam Page as well. Their careers started to become defined much more by other
things and the conflict with Punk than than this story. But this one doesn't
really get it to do. Historically, I don't. I don't see it
mentioned with the reverence you would expect it to be mentioned, but you know,
at the same time, a w's running so fast. There's not a
lot of time for that kind of stuff anyway, and if there was,
it might very well that could be the case that this is mentioned all the
time for its quality. But I thought that was interesting, you know.
He went and he went and dove in and made the comparisons and came away
thinking that. And it's hard because you know, yeah, athletically the things
the guys are doing. Of course, nobody was doing stuff like that in
the nineties and the eighties, and the stuff of the business hadn't even gotten
to the point where people would think to try those things in the ring.
So there's that natural edge to it. But there is there's a ton of
story and where they were going, and these guys really are thoughtful about that
stuff. Omega in particular is like the best ever I could at finding ways
to thread moments of significance into a match, like twelve of them instead of
just one, you know, and they all sort of register if you pay
enough attention and if you don't. It's still absolutely fabulous thing. You know,
when when you when you have more than I mean, if you're really
yeah, I mean I know you're, I know you're you're you're more speculating
in the idea of things like twelve moments of you know, like that to
me right there, that's that's a problem to problem you give it too much
because because it could be too much, it could be too much like,
uh, it's gate keeping. It's like only people that know all these references
really appreciate what I'm doing. And of course that's annoying. Like in any
walk of life, someone that makes references until only six people appreciate it is
annoying. Rockers versus orient Express too, it's a great match. It's nowhere
near this though it's too short. I agree with that because that's what it's
about too. It's not just about who's who the great teams were, what
the great tag matches were. It's about who was given this kind of time
to really, you know, slowly let a match boil. I remember there
was an unbelievable tag match in the AWA between the Rockers and Buddy Rose and
no not Ray Stevens. Oh my god, I guess it wasn't so great
if I don't remember who it was Rockers, Buddy Rose, it, Dug
Summers, it got it, got Marty and Shawn their jobs in WWF.
It was so good. I couldn't believe how how great that tag match was.
But again, all of them are sort of like, they're not featured
matches on featured shows. They're just teams that went out one night and blew
away all expectations, right, you know, and that's what we made it
great. But the preconditions weren't set for this to be great. It just
happened to unfold that way, and people remembered it fondly for that reason.
But if the tag match, it's probably not going to get that kind of
layout and formatting to where it can be all time great. I think that's
that's why the roster of contenders to this for best tag match in US history
or is actually much thinner than you would think at first glance. Yeah,
I guess that it's TRUEW is always under under emphasized tag teams WCW, you
know, not in the eighties, but in the nineties certainly under emphasized them
tremendously to the point that most time champions were just you know, two singles
guys linked up for a little while, the Steiners against Hasse and uh Saki
in Japan. It's alway yep to me, but yeah, it's it's an
interesting delineation. It's interesting category to consider when we talk about greatest. Omega,
who suffer a broken finger in this match, had had a lot of
things to say, and not about this match, but just about his his
outlook on the industry. Jonathan Snowden, who is writing for Bleacher Report at
the time, did a piece that came out right around the time of Revolution
twenty twenty that had Omega wing and in his vision of wrestling. He said,
a lot of wrestlers are wrestling fans at heart. I'm not necessarily a
fan anymore. I'm a fan of TV dramas. I'm a fan of video
games, a fan of movies. I like the way that those forms of
media are laid out to attract the fan. That's my study material for how
I put together a storyline or a match. Yes, I'm athletic and I
can do cool moves, and I try to be original with the way I
performed them. But I feel the way that I put things together is different
from the average wrestler, because the average wrestler is just that, he's just
a wrestler. He's a wrestler who wants to be a wrestler. I'm a
wrestling I am wrestling as a job. But trying to tell human stories to
pull out your heart strings that can be easily veer into annoying territory. But
I think he, I think he, I don't know. I think he
puts it well, yeah, it's fine. I mean there are a lot
of heart strings. I mean, don't don't don't say that too much.
Yeah, exactly, don't, right, don't tell us too much about that
part of your process show instead of tell on that yeah, yeah, I
don't want to know as much as yours your Yeah. I don't need this
to be that kind of high drama. It needs to be, you know,
the only drama that should bubble up is the same kind of drama you'd
get in any great sport. And that's the multivariate you know, that's not
like just that's not a small menu of things you can achieve, but you
know, to achieve the same things that high dramas stop like if it's not
something you'd see in a football field and feel on a baseball game. You
shouldn't try to get people to feel that in wrestling story. It's too overwrought.
It gets too far away from the inevitability of the fact that this comes
down to a one on one match, and that's not going to be a
passion play. That's going to be two people trying to beat each other because
of the riches that are promised to them if they win, and the pressures
that creates and the tensions that creates is plenty for wrestling. You don't need
to make it about totally you know things that Shakespeare wrote about. That's when
it gets a little foolish to me. He also said a lot of wrestling
historians and purists will go to bat and say that Ric Flair was the greatest
of all time because he was so successful for a period of years. The
same goes for because it's your Gookata, who's almost the modern day Rick Flair.
They have a very pattern main event style, but it's very successful.
They bring out the best in almost every opponent. I would watch some of
the main event performances and I would say, well, this is a great
match. Wow, you don't realize until after you've seen it ten times or
twelve times, this is actually just a formula they kind of copied and pasted.
They see that the reaction is the same every time, so the wrestler
says, oh, okay, this is a formula that works, and regardless
of how many times they've seen it, it still works. I think that's
why the Keny Omega booms art and there's no Kenny Omega copy and paste formula.
It's all different. It's difficult and very mentally draining. And because I
do that, maybe it makes me not a true wrestlers wrestler. What I'm
trying to do is not attract the wrestler's wrestling fan. I'm trying to open
up the world to what wrestling can be and show there is no limitation to
what wrestling can be. I went way outside that box. I wasn't using
the Agel wrestler formula, where if you do this, it's going to get
a reaction. So you do this set list of things at this timing,
and no, it's definitely going to work. I try to make everything unique,
almost anti wrestling in a way, but still existing within the four sides
of a wrestling ring, All right? Is he done? Almost? My
strong suit. I think it is long term storytelling. I'm a very neurotic
individual and I'm a stickler for detail, so I believed, given an opportunity
and given time, I could tell stories people really haven't seen in professional wrestling.
And it's a worthy goal because it's produced wonderful stuff. But yeah,
I'm just watching a wrestling match. Guy like talk, just stop. That's
that's that's the extent of it. That's how I feel as a fan,
you know, So incorporate that into your process however however you will. But
that's him explaining the process. This of course historic show because John Moxley wins
the w Championship and his jumping from WWF to a e W was big.
I remember thinking when aw started, like, man, how can this not
be TNA and how they could? How can not be TENA is to get
curt Angle immediately right, To get somebody that you would consider outside the reach
of an upstart group to come in and say yes, to endorse the concept
of the thing, and to also send signals that these guys can spend.
You know, Moxley, no matter how unhappy was at WWF was not going
to come to AW for this huge ass pay cut. I don't think.
I mean, maybe maybe he would totally disagree with that. I'm not trying
to put words in his mouth. I'm not trying to be in his head.
I'm just telling you that as a fan, that was one of the
first things I thought when he came out, Like, these guys have got
some spending power if they can. If John Moxley was you know, a
Stean Ambrose, he was a WW champion. He was right, He's one
of the top five six guys on the on the depth chart. Totally,
you know, they went with him. I mean, I guess you can
say that, I don't know exactly. We were happy to lose him.
He's a contender, you know. I mean, he's a he's a he's
a he's a gentleman of sorts. He's certainly that's fucking government's fuck death.
He's a he's a man who who certainly he certainly you know, has likes
to have his eggs in a certain basket, you know. But in terms
of you know, is he that guy? I mean, really, we
we don't see eye eye on that, right. So as multi as multi
faceted of performers. I think he is. I'm not sure we see the
same vision as to where he fits best. I'm not sure we see the
same vision as to him remaining employed with the way and hey, pal,
that child love so much. That's a product of your union with Renee?
Who who puts you in the position to meet her? By the way,
pal, let me let me tell you something. Just make sure that it's
yours, because it might not be That's all I'm saying, might not be
yours. How do you mean, Vince, it may be mine. I've
fornicated with Renee on many occasions, and I've completed inside her with my with
my say it. What's the problem. You're right, Vince, to be
loosed the signal go ahead with with my man chowders like mantar my Vince McMahon
showder went inside her, and you know that makes babies. I don't know
what he turned into a high school health class instruct her, but thanks for
the lesson. I remember when he came out at Double or Nothing, we
had a live Remember when I came outside star Cast and we were in Vegas
and lapsed. Vince was quick to say, like when Renee gets to TV
Monday. You fucking wait, that's right, and then she ended up going
to a W eventually, well, yes, after after after she realized that
that that after we realized that we didn't have the you know, we didn't
we didn't need her anymore. But she just he was she wasn't she wasn't
doing it for us as a company, as a brand, as an entertainment
vehicle on a weekly basis, exactly, and so uh and so the circumstances
are such that Moxley's looking for the exit. He'd had an injury he came
back from for his last run in WW, and he was just not passionate
about it. He talked about this at a recent star cast Inside the Ropes,
recorded it and has it up on YouTube. Here's a bit of a
bit of sound as to what was going through Moxley's head when he made the
decision to leave W for a W and within a matter of months become a
W World champion. The whole time from the time I came back to about
the beginning of the year, I knew I was leaving, but I was
like pissed about it. I wasn't like excited to leave yet I was like
bitter about it because I'm like, I can't believe they're gonna make me leave.
They're gonna make me walk away from all this money. I can't believe
that. Can we not just write one good storyline to get me out right,
one good prol moods? Everything has to be fucking stupid, everything have
to make me look like an idiot, Like for Fox take You're gonna make
me walk away from all this fucking money. Because it's not like I didn't
want that money, you know. I was like, yeah, I want
it, but I'm not doing that shit. And I'm like so, I
was like pissed. I'm like, I can't believe they're gonna They're they're so
fucking competent that they're gonna make me walk away from all this money. Jesus
Christ, Like, I'm only gonna go back to the indies. Fuck it,
let's go after about January first, because I remember me and Renee went
on a hike the Eternal Head Peak was in Red Rock Canyon, uh the
night before. You know, I was all bitching about the same ship I've
been bitching about all the time, and I was like, all right,
tomorrow we're going to hike starting to starting this year off good because January first
of twenty eighteen, I woke up with the fucking alien head in my arm.
Those are that picture on the Countdown show was so I was like,
Okay, twenty eighteen suck. Twenty nineteen is gonna be good. We're starting
off where a hike fresh air. It's gonna be good. And uh,
you know, you clear your head, you start talking or whatever. And
it was like, I don't already know when I was gonna leave, but
it's like that was the day I was like I started to think about what
it would actually look like. I'm like, okay, I'll go I'll go
Japan. I don't know where in Japan, but one of them the bunch
companies in Japana over there. I'll go back to the indies and I'll just
like make my own schedule. Oh that'd be sweet because I'll be able to
make my own schedule, dude. And I was like, man, we're
gonna have free time, we get schedule a vacation for once. Actually,
this is gonna be great. And I started to get excited about I'm like
That's when I was like, oh, I'm leaving it's gonna be awesome.
And then at that point I got excited about it. And then uh,
and that was before the aw thing even happened. Then's any any thoughts there
on Moxy's commentary. Well, I mean, you know, the the thing
is, when when it comes down to it, you know, we offered
him a multitude of of quality, you know, well written, well designed
story features, you know, for him to to to to participate in in
the competitive nature, and you know, he, uh, he decided that
these were not of of his of his uh you know caliber, And we
said, well, okay, let me let's see what can we do,
what can we do to to maybe entertain, you know, the entertainment that
you want. You know, how can we entertain you John Moxley or Danim
Brose, whatever the fuck his name is. And you know, he continued
to basically just say he reminded me of a child who just wants to dislike
whatever it is you're offering. And it got to the point where we're like
we you know, I said to to to my contemporaries, I said,
well, you know that he just does not seem to want anything that we
want that we're willing to offer him. So so what can we do?
And they gave a number of you know, maybe let him write his own
his own storyline or come up with his own ideas, and you know,
maybe he can write his own promos or you know, choose someone he wants
to have a program with. You know, we we threw a lot of
We threw a lot of different options out there, and uh. And then
I said, well, christ sakes, we let him have brock with a
chain, summing absolutely And I said, well, these are all interesting,
but personally, I think the best option we have is to kill him,
which you know, the the mike Mike, when you say kill him,
yes, you mean what in what bury his character, make him useless to
the fan, ruin his market value, no, no, no, no
no, To to cease life, to end him, to to have a
funeral for the the physical being that is Dean Ambrose, to you know,
to widow his girlfriend or whatever the fuck she has. How would you propose
to do that? Well, I mean we didn't. I gave a number
of options. I said, we could go simple. We could just do
you know, just shoot him in the head with a gun. There was
the option we could do did with own heart, you know, just drop
him. But you know these were these were frowned upon by the by the
board of directors. And I said, okay, well, then we're kind
of at an impasse here. You know, we don't have the I'm not
we We've given him enough creative leeway, and if you're not willing to let
him be destroyed on a physical nature, then the only option we have is
to let him write out his contract and get the funk out of Dodge.
I still think we should have killed him. I would love to have dropped
him from seventy feet. Remember Vince, when you did the Steve Boston podcast
around the launch of the network. Uh, Steve was asking you, you
know who you thought in the current roster of the current crop were guys that
you know had top guy ability and and you were, you know, kind
of off the top of your head listing off names. And you said,
I don't know if it's an ambrose. You you brought him up, and
yet here you are. Well, I said, I don't know if as
an ambrose. I didn't say that it was an ambrose. I said,
I don't know, which means you know a multitude of things. You know
that just means that. Well, at the time, did I see him
as a main of enter? I don't know. At the time, did
I see him as someone who have the ability to be a main of enter?
I do not know. What I do know is that he did not
turn out to be a worthy investment within the WWE system. Should he have
been more appreciative and more sort of considerate of the possibilities of the idea of
being the lunatic fringe That was the moniker you assigned to him and we had
to listen to announcers on WWB television tell him the lunatic fringe for years.
Yes, did I appreciate the possibilities, the creative possibilities that that opened for
him to be called that? Well, you see the thing. See,
I'm not aware, you know, I'm not in his brain. I don't
have that capability. But what I can say is that, you know,
when we when we bounced around a number umber of different character phraseology to focus
groups, the one that got the most response was indeed the lunatic fringe,
and it certainly marketed well, it certainly played well. And the fact that
he that mister Ambrose as an individual, a competitor and a performer, an
entertainer could not find a way to make such a marketable a term and a
marketable character. Work really reflects poorly on mister Ambrose. And so what was
your sort of thought as to where the lunatic Fringe character could go? When
you when you think lunatic Fringe, what do you think in terms of others?
The thing is, you know, I mean we're looking at it from
a total from a multitude of different you know, different perspectives, not only
in terms of the the on the television vehiculars, you know, perspective,
also the live audience perspective. You know, we're also looking at at at
the perspective of shareholders, the the perspective of That's one thing, you know,
say what you will about Dean Ambrose. He never thought about the shareholders.
I mean, that's just it. He thinks of himself as as artists
only and uh, you know, as as a performer, but really as
a performer, you do answer to a number of individuals. And you know,
we're you know, when it comes to the bottom line, you know,
we're looking at in terms of characters and within the WWE system, we're
looking at growth, hacking all right, you know, yeah, tight nutrition
style. You know, we're look because because because really is that what some
of the top guys call the ship they can get their hands on outside of
wellness these days? I mean, Brock is certainly a growth hacker. I
definitely think that there are a number of individuals who who are able to get
their hands on growth, get their hands on on particular growth hacking supplements.
So you change the age from hormone to hacking, got it? Uh?
You know? So again we look at it from a holistic perspective. You
know, we're looking at the ROI Innerdina Ambrose. We're looking at and a
lunatic fringe as well. By the way, the the you know, we're
exactly we're looking at the IP. How does it uh uh you know,
is it a disruptor? Is it you know, is it within the wheelhouse
of the ww perspective? Is it a is it best practice? Does it
move the needle? Are we talking big data? You know? But all
and all again we're looking at how can we hold on a second? I
just realized if if the most famous wrestler in the history of UK wrestling were
to come along these days, he wouldn't be big Daddy. He would be
big data. I believe he would be a big data Yes, absolutely that
because again you know, we are a collaborative organization. And did Denambros appreciate
that? I you know, you'd have to ask Dan Ambrose about that,
because that you know, we're looking at this at our collaborative nature in terms
of intelligence, whether it be artificial, business, emotional, market competitive otherwise,
we are simply trying to get some sort of intelligent strategy for an IP
such as such as the lunatic fringe. And you know, we do we
take a long look at as we're creating these characters. You know, these
are not just some things that we throw around and see what stick we we
have. You know, these are we have intuitive analytics that that create each
platform and then we unpack the pros and cons most of the cons you know,
and you know, to decide if if you know, what we have
here provides the core competency that each character U requires, you know, and
for our for all of our our employees who are in part of in that
creative dynamic. You know we're talking these these people have a full plate all
the time, you know, and again we look at does this character integrate
within the w t B system, does it engage within the w TW system?
Is it efficient? Is it social? Is it diverse? And is
it an actionable character? Right that, See, those are all things he
never considered before, exactly complaining right and and and these are the things,
you know, because we we are a machine, you know, we're not
just we're not just a group of individuals. We are a machine, and
every every gear within the machine, you know, affects everybody else. So
if if if that's not something that he's interested in, then you know,
we we wish him luck in his future endeavors. Yeah, I can't imagine
why he left, can't imagine. He tells several stories in his book,
which I recommend. It's a really good book of just the creative frustrations he's
describing. You know, he'll drop an F bomb on TV by mistake,
not not on an on mike moment, but like in Ring, just you
know, getting lost in the fight and everything, and they'll cuss him out
and he'll apologize, and then the apology isn't good enough or and they start
calling him we know, you're a different kind of cat. And he's very
self conscious about being made fun of. You know, he's not just He's
not a guy that's going to sit there and laugh along while you say he's
quirky, you know, or you say things that could be backhanded compliments.
He's one of those guys, you know what I mean. He talks about
it. But see, then again we're talking about an individual who can't just
go with the flow, right because in WW like, you cannot expect to
be a prime player unless you accept that certain people in the organization can dress
you down to your face and you take it. Also, I mean,
are you expecting that everybody needs to respect your idea as a good idea?
Maybe it's not a good idea. Maybe you're the only one who thinks it's
a good idea, right, I mean, it's not you accepted that you
can be our world champion and our most important guy and have zero respect of
Vince Making. I mean, can you expect the fact that you can be
the face of the company, the world champion and not mean shit? Right
that without us or at all? That's true? And so in his book,
he recounts the germs of him jumping and then and then the actual moment.
He writes January twenty nineteen. First I heard of Tony con was from
Chris Jericho. I hadn't talked with christ And sometime about anything that didn't involve
sasquatch like monsters or UFOs. I did know he had been doing a lot
of stuff outside WBE. He wrestled for New Japan and even had his own
cruise. Now, after our New Year New Year's Day hike which you just
referenced there, I mentioned to Renee that I was going to hit up Jericho
and get to lay the land. From his perspective, I hadn't been on
the Indies since twenty eleven, and the who landscape outside WWB had changed dramatically
in eight years. I never made dick on the Indian never made dick on
the Indies, But now a lot of folks were making good money. There
were groups with TV. There was something called gc W. Now these days
everyone can stream guess DVD's aren't a thing anymore. Before I left cz W,
Drake, Nick Gage and I had a three way light tube fest in
front of fifty rampid Lumberton, North Carolina. Fans had a weird bought show,
sacrificing pints of blood for the sole purpose of putting out a hot seller
on smart Mark Video. Everything's different f and Ripped than Winkle. There seemed
to be a lot of cross promotion now it was a little overwhelming. Trying
to make a sense of it all. I figure Jericho could give me a
good look at who might be totally full of shit. I also just violent,
hopelessly, hopelessly into the death bell style. You know, I just
don't understand that. I saw him get the things hammered into his head in
London. Yeah, and like the peacock feathers coming out of his head.
I hated it. I hated all of it. I thought it was just
so unnecessary. He's such a good wrestler. He didn't do any of that
against Orange Cassidy and the aforementioned main event, so he can. That's a
thing like that. That's what makes it so hard about criticizing modern wrestlers is
they can do the things that you accuse them of not being able to do.
They can do them, they choose not to and people it's why I
accuse them, right, And that's that's something you can hold against them.
But I think people general just assume that that they're doing that as shortcuts,
and it's like, now they've done everything else, they just choose to do
it this way. Nope. I And that's why I lose respect for them,
because they don't do it in a way that's that's like they do this
bullshit and and that's their choice, and I hate it. It's definitely now
baked into the cake of aw like we went to blood and guts, like
he's bringing the bed of nails and their blast attacks, like the toothpaste is
out of the tube. Like if they don't do this every if he doesn't
do this just about every time he's out there, people are going to be
feeling like they didn't get their money's worth. He's he's he's done that to
AJW for better or worse for worse? Yeah, because he turned out that
what he all when he's voicing all these deep seated creative frustrations at w B.
Yeah, a lot of it is the absolutely hokey dialogue that he's asked
to deliver. And he's a guy who's just a wonderful promo. He you
know, he just turned You just turn the knob on his back and he'll
go and he'll guess, you know, he just keep fucking bugs me.
I don't like the way he talks. He like listening even to that clip
he played, I just annoyed me. He's just annoying, Like he's just
like a you know, and listen, I like, I don't, I
don't know, like I don't. I don't respect his opinion at all.
I don't respect his thought process. I see him as just honestly, he
comes across like a bitch. Yeah, like honestly, you know, listen,
I'm not saying if you if you if you are not happy in the
company, then don't be there, then leave. But like exactly, but
it's like at the same time, you know, you're you're whining it about
them not giving you shit, But you know, make the best of it
if you want to, if you want the money or whatever, make the
best of it. Try to try to. I guess. Yeah, he
had like four or five solid years of, you know, according to him,
taking things that he never wanted to say and never wanted to do and
going out there and trying to make it the absolute basic. But here's the
thing. Here's the thing. There are so many people who can do it,
so really, who's the fucking failure in that regard. No no,
no, no, no, I'm saying there are guys who are able to
who are able to manipulate their circumstances in in the WWE so that they can
do what they want. So he's not that that caliber of player. I
know he's not. I get it. So I think he made the right
choice for himself, realizing you haven't tried it, no doubt, no doubt.
But like everything, it's like, I don't know there there there doesn't
seem to be. I don't feel like it. And maybe this is why
why he rubs me the wrong way. Cript if I'm wrong, but it
just seemed like because I could be very well be wrong, but it seemed
like, at least in that clip, that he wasn't taking any responsibility for
any of the ship that happened. I think he like he blames everybody else.
He was told this is what you can do to get around that,
and he did it, and it did nothing for him. He just kept
getting handed stuff that he found like totally juvenile and objectionable, and it was.
And what that is is Vince doesn't think you're a top guy, and
they don't have the heart to say it out right because they need you because
you're a reliable hand and you're you're good with the material we give you,
and you're an important part of the show. But you're never going to be
a person that's allowed to say, fuck this, I want to do what
I want to do. There's like, you know, six people at a
time that can do that, and you were never going to be one of
them. And so you know that's this thing like, yeah, you can
have the wit to pull it off, you could have the guile to pull
it off, but you also need to have the extra element of Vince sees
you as somebody that ought to have that voice, and very almost nobody maybe
Punk is the exception, but we saw what happened with that guy. He
ended up going completely insane because of how hard it was to hold up being
the guy that's going to do what he wants to do and represent his own
interests at a time when they didn't see him as someone worthy of that position.
You eventually go even more crazy than if you just do whatever it is
they hand you to the best of your ability, And that is sort of
like not for certain for certain breed of wrestler, that's worse than not being
in wrestling at all is to show up to the building and being like,
I could not possibly get passion together for this, because you know, you're
driving hundreds of miles between towns, you're on you're on the plane, you're
thinking about wrestling twenty four seven, and you got to WB because the things
that entered your mind in those in between times and those moments of drudgery are
things that you could put into action in the ring and on the microphone that
grew your prospects and grew your value, and grew the level of awareness of
who you were as a character on those smaller circuits and in some degree in
the developmental system at FCW in this case, and then all of a sudden
he tails us. Really well, you get to this point where it's like
that part of you has to die because all the lifetime of habitually thinking about
the next thing you can do to get people's attention, the next thing you
can say to get people's attention has no outlet. It has no chance in
the face of the script they hand you every Monday. And some guys are
great at just saying fuck it. You know, I'm working for WWE.
This is awesome, This is the best money you can make in wrestling.
I'm going to stay famous. I can put away enough money so that I
can actually hope to live a decent life when they decide they're done with me.
But for others, it's like, I don't even want to be in
wrestling if I can't find an outlet for the ship that's popping off in my
head every fifteen minutes. I guess, I mean, I guess. But
to me that's also like, I mean, that's I'm not saying it's right
or wrong. I'm not saying it's right. I listen, I believe that
everybody. I believe in a perfect world, if life were fair, right,
you know, any creative person would be able to make money on all
their ideas and would they would be able to execute their ideas, their vision.
But it's not like that. There's not an ounce of that in any
It's the you know, if it's funny because if you think about it,
like the people who are at the top of wrestling are like the one percent
of all the wrestlers in the world, right, who are the people who
are in like say W A. E. W in America are the one
percent? But then to be to be on the level that he's talking about.
You have to be the one percent of the one percent. Yeah,
you have to. It's just to convince McMahon at a certain point that at
a certain point in contract negotiations renewal, that he needs to pay you,
you know whatever. I don't know millions of dollars a year. I don't
know what his highest learning year was. I have no idea. But the
thing people can't forget about Vince is he's not going to see you as a
top guy if you haven't first maneuvered your way into being one of the top
paid guys in the company. Because Vince is like most rich people, he
always feels like people are trying to fuck him out of his money. Yeah,
the more money you have, the more paranoid you are that someone's getting
two dollars off of you that they don't deserve, you know what I mean.
The poor, the middle class, they hardly ever worry about getting screwed
or they just accepted as part of life. The richer you are, the
more you're like, this guy isn't justifying what I'm paying him. And so
for Vince, these guys get these massive pushes when it comes to a moment
of leverage at the bargaining table where he rather would not lose you due to
competition or whatever the case might be. Look at Brock. I mean,
yeah, Brock at a massive push in two thousand and two, But look
at how much more leverage he came to the table with after leaving the way
he did and coming back with the UFC tailwind behind him and being able to
go to UFC and make millions whenever Vince pissed him off. That's the only
way you're going to be able to be a shot caller like a Sina like
he could go and just do. He could transform any wrestling territory overnight into
a viable number one, just like Hogan did ninety four. He's gonna he's
going to respect that more than more than your ability. He's going to respect
the fact that he has to pay you a certain amount, and so god
damn it, he's going to push you in a way where he's telling himself
that he's earning a return on how much he's paying you. And Ambrose never
found himself. I don't think in a position to have a kind of contract
where Vince would say I'm going to let this guy pooh pooh scripts and without
any consequence for how he's viewed internally. We're not going to you know,
he's not going to suffer any ill consequence for calling our shit stupid or doing
the kind of thing Steve Austen has always done. I think Sina was probably
more political about it, but he certainly turned things down Rains my impressions,
no one even approaches Rains with Creative. It's like Roman figures it out in
its money. So you know, one can deny that the ratings and SmackDown
are absolutely fantastic, and Hayman is the secret sauce there, just like he
was with Punk in the Summer of Punk. The Hayman's right there, you
know, sort of minding the affairs, the creative affairs, being the creative
go between and the person that can soften discontent in the back and forth to
where it comes out benefiting the party that he's attached his wagon to at the
given moment. But yeah, I think Dean was never going to be a
guy because he's just not You saw him on that Austin interview. He's not
capable of talking himself up right backstage politically, to the point that he could
ever justify a contract like that. Cody comes in and now Vince is going
to rip the heart out a w of course, Cody's going to be able
to have all kinds of say so and what he says out there because he's
being paid in such a way that that's that's a precondition of getting him,
and that's in the Vince gott n events was like, fine, like whatever
you know, tell whatever story you want to tell, Tell whatever story you
want to tell for us to get you, because it's not you I want,
it's it's the destruction of aw that I want. And so that's that's
that that's leveraged. I don't think he ever had. And they so they
saw him as a you know, as somebody that really wasn't shit without their
creative flourishes being sprinkled on top of him. Honestly, that's what it was.
And he just had a Vince had a goofy fucking idea of what you
know that that phrase that's such great ship pal that people always attribute to Vincey
that that came from Moxley. Yeah, when he did I think the first
interview he did when he jumped was with wid Keller p w Church, and
he said he was explaining a story where something was pitched to him that was
just just creative that he felt was impossible to make good and believable. And
when he pushed back and Vince in that way, Vince, but it's such
good shit, Pal, And it was like that moment of like, this
guy's not there's no like changing this guy's mind. There's no having him see
it the way I see it. So down the drain it all goes.
So he continues in the book, I hadn't breathed a word about my plans
to anyone but my wife, and I didn't feel I could talk about it
with anybody in WWE. Chris is one of the smartest guys in the business
and somebody I trust. So I was curious about what the reaction would be
when I told him I was planning to walk across the bridge. I knew
fullwell would likely blow up behind me. So here it is. This is
Jericho versus Moxley. And that's actually pretty poetic because it was an interactionally,
they got him into the first places. And so that's another thing that's another
huge part of Jericho. And you talked about how important it was for him
to be there from day one and winning the world title first behind the scenes,
convincing a whole host of people a Christian cage. You go to Callis,
you know what Callis would come in because of Omega, But you go
to so many people that Jake Hager, so many people that he was able
to convince that AW was a pond worth jumping into. I'm sure he played
a role, honestly in everybody that ever had started in WW that's come to
AW apart and interacting with them and convincing them, answering their questions, you
know, because Tony Kahn was a very unknown entity from the perspective of someone,
can this guy actually finance an organization that's going to be able to build
enough revenue to stay around for a year? Where are going to look like
idiots for jumping in with both feet on his vision one of you know,
ten or fifteen people who've had money right in their lifetime that are going to
start the next big promotion and it goes away in months. That was a
big part of what took see hm Punk so long, I guess was that
he really was looking for the proof points that this actually it's going to retract
the kind of investment from TV and stuff that would make it have legs.
I sent Jericho at text in the afternoon of January first to hit me up.
I never heard back. He's a busy dude, probably on an a
tour orsome shit. I saw some stuff about this new modebut thing over the
next couple of weeks, I thought it was just another indie. I saw
some guys I see in all these other shows that Pentagon, dude, it
looked like they were bringing Jericho for a big show. That's cool. I
didn't think it was anything out of the ordinary. It seems like there's two
hundred companies and they all have three letters. I had too many my own
problems at hand to go sorting through all of them. For now, I
was just focused on getting to the finish line. It was a few weeks
later. I was riding the back seat with Headgg and bo that's a Curtis
Axel and Bow Dallas Yea on the way to Memphis for RAW. I had
to text at Jenna Loebe from tr I think that's a department at w B
about something, and scrolling through the jay's in my phone right next to her
name, was Jericho new Ay w Now, I remember the motherfucker changed his
number a few months back and I texted his old one. I texted Chris's
current number, the same message I had before. In About thirty seconds later,
he hit me back. We decided to talk to next daying Jericho called
me laws in my hotel room. Dread a dreading having to go to raw
that afternoon. This would be a conversation of the highest kfabe, we agreed
before I finally dropped my bombshell, along with three or four minutes of the
reasoning that had brought me here, the bombshell being that he wasn't going to
resign. I have expected Jericho to try to talk me off the ledge,
for all I knew he was gearing up for a return at the Royal Rumble.
Without hesitation, he just said, yeah, that's why I left,
before going to some of his own creative frustrations. I volleyed back some of
my own baggage, which he returned with more of his own. Conversation quickly
escalated into a full blown bitching about WWE session, the kind that can only
take place between two people who have worked there. We talked for almost an
hour before he mentioned this aw thing. He explained to me that this is
a real thing, and he signed a deal there. There's real money,
real backing. These people aren't stupid, and they're trying to do it right.
There's a guy named Tony Khan. They're going to make a go of
it. He says, this is what I'm doing for the next three years.
This is a lot to process. My initial reaction is I want to
be a part of it. I try to quell my excitement. But it's
just so nice to talk about new possibilities instead of how I'm going to butt
fuck a corpse. In SEG six to No SEG six, they talk about
segments is sag in ww backstage. That's disgusting what we're talking. What what's
happening in seg Oh, stop fucking We're gonna We're gonna talk. We gotta
listen, listen, listen, we gotta talk segate stop. And it's because
we've got we listen. We've got we've got we've got to we've gotta big.
I mean, I don't know what your problem is, but we've got
to use term we've got. We've got television. This is you have in
the wrestling program. This is television. You know, we're working a whole,
a whole different avenue of entertainment here, and so we need to talk
in terms of segs. We talk work in segs. We got to talk
in terms of ments, and we need needs to be talking in terms of
eggs because and and and catering. We're talking in terms of eggs and mints.
We have segs and ments for television. So what do we got for
sings? What do we got from sex three tonight? Oh? I don't
know. Let's sit and put our glasses down the edge of our nose and
talk about we were so so we we're talking now what's the flow here?
It's the overarching you know, we gotta think about how we're going to be
from point A to point and B. He's a producer on this, who's
agenting this one? Who's can I ask? So? Who who's agenting?
Uh? Seg five? Let's emphasize on the finished Can we understand that really,
you know, the flow of the animal of seg five needs to move
right into sake six. So I'm thinking about, is there's kind of a
disconnect here? We might be going to move this around? Oh yeah,
yeah, that's great. Really what we should do maybe really significant move,
you know, all right, we have all the segs on the board here,
and I'm just looking and I'm really wondering if, if, if SEG
two really should switch places with SEG thirteen. Maybe that's the problem that Vince,
she's had a little more SEG this it Maybe they's ast frustration in the
writing. Oh yeah, we're having fun, making fun here, pal,
but we're all there's a white bull board and we're all taking this very serious.
You know, really, what's what's the you know, look at the
size of this table we're standing said, we gotta we gotta think about you
know, you know, we're gonna think in terms of story, right,
you know, and where we're going what you know, we're just wrestling matches.
It's wrestling matches, you know. And they're talking like they're, you
know, creating a cure for cancer. We get, we get, we
get, you know again, we gotta get listen. This is just week
one, right, all right? One SEG one, Week one, SEG
one follow one, so gross segs. I just I can't Every time I
get a little sniff of like how they talk backstage at TV at WW.
I just want to fucking throw myself out of a window, and I'm sure
they wish I would and I won't. It's so cool. Just make sure
you finish in four minutes. And Vince wants to see a lot of brains.
Cody Rhodes is involved that. Oh, Cody Jericho asks if he can
have Cody call me. I agree, this remains top secret security clearance level
shit. Cody calls me as I'm pulling into the garage for TV. You
imagine this conversation happening Wow. While he's in the car at a WWTV.
I go to an empty staircase in the concourse and call back. Cody explains
to me what's happening with a W. I listen. There is much more
infrastructure in place than they're letting on. There's talk of network television. I'm
filled in on what exactly a W is? This guy Tony Kah Again,
it's mostly just a pleasant catchup conversation. There's only so much to talk about.
I still have almost four months left with WWW, and a W ain't
even gonna run a show till May. As it would turn out, twenty
five days after my WB contract expired. Where wait what MGM Vegas pretty fucking
interesting. Dams becomes John Moxley once again, and it's a big deal.
And again he turns out to be a valuable hand for a w because when
ship goes down with Punk, he's the guy they call interim champion there when
Punk first goes down to injury, and you know, the guy they call
when the pandemic hits and they need somebody to to carry the belt over the
summer, over the whole year and make TV interesting with no fans. And
hear he's doing it again as Punk disappears and he headlines of show and punks
Backyard of Chicago, and it feels okay, it doesn't feel like, you
know, I'll blow away pay per view. But if Moxley wasn't there,
they were really would have been scrounging for something. Yeah, So he beats
Jericho for the championship for every twenty ninth. This was in twenty twenty.
At the same time, he was a New Japan US champ, so he
took kind of the Cody thing where he went to New Japan as well as
every US and D that would take him. That was his thought process at
least, and then it turns out a W was actually more of a fuller
commitment, but he was already in New Japan and making his name there as
well. Defended the championship April fifteenth against Jake Hager MTY arena no holds barred
as he begins his pandemic era reign. He defended against Brody Lee, who
came in a double or nothing MPTY arena Jacques Jacques Hagar jack Hagar, yeah,
as some pronounced it. He beat Bride Page, fight for the Fallen
Darby Allen as well, feuded with m JF and it was ultimately well MJFB
him, and then he had a rivalry with Eddie Kingston, beating him in
September, beat Lance Archer in October, and at full gear he beat Kingston.
And then he had a feud with Kenny Omega, and it was at
Winter Is Coming December two of twenty and twenty where they shot the big angle
or Omega turned heel revealed the big plot, beat Moxley ending the rain starts
here at two hundred and seventy seven days Wow. And then he forms the
Blackpool Combat Club and that's the sort of brings in William regal To a W
and that's the iteration that we still see today. But one of the things
that's really really kind of cringey about this this show, or at least not
cringey, but you kind of go yis that's rough in retrospect. What Moxley
wins the belt in the main event and it grabs the microphone and he starts
talking about I need whiskey, started talking about to few beers needed whiskey.
That turned out to be a problem because he ended up getting so close to
the bottle during this run that any rehab for alcoholism, no shit, it
was a big deal. And wow, I knew that a problem with the
guy. Oh, I just I just right, he's gotta check. He's
checking himself and every all of his affairs are in order. It's checking day.
He's about to renee. He's got the car warming up in the driveway
and he's gonna go and he's gonna make this thing work. And just before
he steps out of the house, hold on Rene hold On, I say,
this is hello John for man, I knew this was gonna happen.
Pl I just I knew there was a problem. I knew you had demons
and uh, you know, all I can do is wish you the best.
I don't know if you deserve the best, but you know, we'll
see where you are the other side. But I can tell you one thing.
I'll be watching every single moment pal such good shit? Is it putting
Rene back on? Are the chances zero that people in Stanford, when news
came out that Moxley was entering rehab, said, under their breath into each
other. So he told you, told you the guy had to have a
problem to not agree with our creative genius, to not see the vision we
saw for him and his kid. I knew that, you know, obviously
there was something. You know, they're just you know, I've never seen
some you know, one individual so adamant that what we were providing was wrong
and really so bent on self destruction at the end of the day. Yeah,
and the end of the day. I mean, look at this.
This, here's a guy who prefers to injure himself. I mean, is
that is that a I mean, what is that right? Given the choice,
he will mutilate his body over over, you know, over a sense
of of of you know, humanity, what well, Vince, you know
human What I just picture Desire picture. Pritchard comes into the office. There's
some minor item of business, some like question about SmackDown Friday. They work
it out in like ten minutes and Vince, you know, after they work
it out, Vince picks up his phone and he starts to Texas. So
what else? Is what else going on? Bou first like, well,
you know, I don't know if you heard, but Ambrose, you hear
about him going into rehab? Did you hear this? I mean I thought
I heard it. I was like, what, you know, it starts
to make a little sense, it doesn't it. I mean, well,
you know, I I'll tell you the thing is between you know, between
you and me. I knew this was happening, and you know he didn't
a problem and he didn't want to share it. You know, there were
problems. I mean there were many times when you know, I would call
upon him, you know, in his hotel on the road, and you
know there was always something going on. You know. I know I knew
this. I knew this, but you know it's not my business, so
I kept my mouth shut. I certainly didn't in any way an attempt to
destroy him. I would never do that. It was done simply because you
know, what are we supposed to do as a human being? What am
I supposed to do? Fast forward a month later, or however long it
was, Moxley was in rehab and gets back to the house in that same
car that Renee was warming up to drive him. Returns back to the driveway
and they walk up the stairs and load into the house in Nevada wherever it
is, and set down the stuff. And he's a renewed man, and
he's he's grateful. He's grateful to be on the other side and to have
seen sunlight and to you know, realize that he can start off on a
new foot. When there's a knock at the door and it's a special delivery.
A lot of bouquets of flowers have come through in the past week as
folks knew that Monsley was wrapping up Inns. McMahon has sent a package as
well to Monsley to thank him for his his bout of courage here and it's
it's a handle of whiskey with a bouquet of flowers to thank him for his
for his progress. Are you serious? Oh I'm kidding, Come on,
man, Oh my god, I fact like this is the company that you
know, waited till see him Punk's wedding day to tell him he's fired.
Come on, I did want to see if you think it was real though?
That was fascinating. Oh so yeah, I listen. I wouldn't because
they're the fucking you know, they're the company that would you know? That's
right? Well, hey, we are the uh the world wide leader of
heard that is out of out of rehab. Hey, do me a favor
once you don't you have something sent to the house. What you know,
what do you think, convincent? Well, what i'd like, actually,
what i'd like to have happened is this break into the house? Bruce?
Do you remember who? We remember? One who we call to get the
beer truck for Steve Auston? Do you remember? See? What I'd like
to do is this You've seen You've seen that that home alone picture. You've
seen that that one with the kid his hands on his face. Yet the
hand of this you know me? So what I think is this. I
want to break into the house, all right. I want I want so
that when he opens the door, okay, when he opens the door of
his house, immediately a four gallon bucket of of of whiskey just pours down
on his head. Great shit, Pal, and can't help but get into
his mouth and he swallows and he relapses. No, he doesn't realize it's
just a joke. Up, it's just a joke. It's a joke.
But the relapse is the joke. That's the funny part, because then it's
like, oh my god, all this time he's going to go back.
It's like it's like taking a walk in your neighborhood and when you get to
the front door, you realizing shit on your shoe. You got shit.
It's like you're walking in the neighborhood. You're walking your neighborhood and you're like
walking around. All of a sudden you realize you have shit in your mouth,
Like, oh fucks, Oh goddamn time. Damn, that's good shit.
Nah, that's that's good shit, Pal, That's the kind of shit
we write about. And in barring that, as soon as he steps out
on his sports the next day, we have Steve Boston just spraying with a
hose of beer. If not, yeah, if he's not, If you're
not willing to, did you go through with our with our prank? What
we can do next is just is just kill him. Go back to that,
go back to the original plan and just and just assassinate him with a
rifle across across the street. Rifle with a scope owt st oswats you know,
getting the fucking book depository across the street from from Moxley. Moxley,
So yeah, so yeah, Vince handled him leaving for a w Well,
I think it's the take home. Yeah, that is correct. I got
bad. He did an interview at Cincinnati dot com his hometown uh once did
Moxley not too long ago, and was talking about how bad it got,
which I just couldn't help to think when he mentions boozing after winning the title,
and he says, quote, over a year ago, I was afraid
of dying of a seizure in the ring. I had that on my mind
every day. It was all messed up and going through an absolute personal hell
for a long time that nobody else even knew about. When you're scarred,
when you're scared for your actual life. To make the decision to go to
rehab and stuff was basically I had to basically assume I'm giving everything away.
I was like, Okay, I'm either going to live a long, happy
life and raise my kid and be a person. Or I can wrestle,
but I can't have both. Oh so let that process kick into gear here
at a Revolution twenty twenty. And before we get to Gabe and his rundown
of why he's put the show before your coach Yers and his personal hand that
he played in making a w Revolution twenty twenty possible out in Chicago received a
couple of letters to the lapsed Inbox boss as to this show and where it
stood with some of our listeners. Andrew wrote to us, and I'm going
to hand you the reins here play in a moment on his rundown of the
card. So let this be, you know, kind of like a fan
contribution to the deep dive that's about to come up a little bit of a
second perspective on the bouts of the night. Alrighty esteemed code chairman, very
long time listener, first time writer. I was in attendance at the first
aw Revolution. Getting there involved preposterous travel, gaming a major corporation for a
hotel and some flights several days in Chicago as a tourist, and listening to
the WCW World War three episode of that cast. I'm from Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada, Home of the Murderer. That's funny, of the Murderer.
In fact, my wife went to the same high school as blaisode all of
the fucking dark boxes. Man, this is actually getting weird. Yeah.
A few days before Christmas twenty nineteen, my wife and I went out for
dinner. During our meal, she told me of an upcoming business trip that
she had been organizing. She had to pick a major American city, a
hotel capable of hosting thirty people for meetings over two days, and how to
do it by the end of February. She chose Chicago the dates or February
twenty sixth and twenty seventh. She also had business in Lansing, Michigan on
March second. The company would cover her airfare, hotel, and accommodation for
most of that week in Chicago, giving her a three day weekend on the
company dime. Knowing that I had lived in Chicago for a summer in twenty
twelve and that I was a gigantic fan of the sport of Kings, she
had also arranged a separate flight for me to join her and acquired tickets to
Revolution Merry Christmas to me. The morning we left Edmonton to fly to Chicago,
COVID was becoming more and more of a going concern. Our flight to
Chicago connected through Minneapolis. Very good, I know, right, And when
we landed there, my wife and a co workers received the corporate email that
suspended all work travel with the loophole that all trips in progress were to be
completed. They had wiggled in just in time. When we arrived in Chicago,
my wife went out for My wife went out for dinner with the co
workers. Well, I walked around Chicago's River Riverwalk listening to your recounting of
WCW's World War Three pay per view. I spent the Thursday wandering about the
loop listening to the NJPWWW Super Show episode as well, which one. Nope,
I don't know, I need these specifics. I need specifics. Friday,
we spent the entire day at the Art Institute of Chicago, which was
overrun with wrestling fans. Made for God, that's something you don't expect every
day, Fucking wrestling fans and the Art Institute of Chicago. I mean it's
not the art of wrestling. Yeah, exactly, Fucking imagine see all all
I picture is I picture about fifty fifty guys that are extremely overweight black T
shirts. You know, the uh, the shorts that are like hugging you
know, you can see the under of their belly. Yep, because there's
the shorts are up so high and carrying around championship belts. So yeah,
nothing wrong with that, totally normally, I that's that's the way. Honestly,
whenever I go to an art museum, that's what I hope happens.
So I'm usually disappointed. So I'm sad that I missed this Art Institute of
Chicago. I remember from the Chicago for Star Cast one, which is a
great trip, was we went to the tele A Cafe, yes we did,
and I wanted an avocado, which you didn't know what it was,
but I don't know fire away from you, and I was like, hey,
can you get me an avocado? And you go into the new tele
A Cafe which is chocolate and ice cream, you go avocado, Yes,
get me an avocado. You want to avocado? My god, directormendous.
Are you gonna get chips with that too? We can give it the come
on, brother, Natellaha avocado with Natella. I don't know, man'll be
awful. It would be awful. I could work, I could work.
I don't know. Maybe like chocolate ducchin. Yeah, like zucchini. Bread's
good. You can work at big Goods. I think I don't be good.
My kid is so unted Antela right now. Oh it's delicious. That's
why I like it. I like it. Listen, I like it.
I'm not like crazy about it, but I mean, if there's a crapery
in like in a ten mile RADI in a ten mile radius, I'm going
banana, nutella, powdered sugar, occasionally almonds. Oh wow, wow,
look at that shaved almonds. I mean, listen, listen. I'm I'm
a fan of of of Nattella gelato. Sure, sure, I love the
you know my favorite My favorite two mixes of gelato are nutella and lemon.
Hazel nut and lemon. I like that. Good for you? Wait,
you know why? You know why I did? I did that. I
don't know if I ever told you this story, but one of the times
I went to Italy, I was like, someone said to me, you
can mix any flavors and they'll work. I was like, bullshit. Oh,
really, so you went for things you thought couldn't possibly Yeah, I
went for two things so far apart, I'm like ntella and lemon. No
way, no way, this is gonna work. And it's my favorite.
That's all. I honestly, if if if we if I go out for
gelato and it's not the same obviously in in in America, but you know
if even so, if I, if we're around and it may have those
two, that's always what I get. That's awesome, love it love obsessed
recently with struct Oh yeah, that's delicious. Oh Mike Jesus. But in
that vein I also had essence of essence of Italian pretty much. Yeah.
I mean they actually do that. They actually make those sounds at the end
of every word. It's true. Can't caramelized fig with banana gelot oh oh
shit as a home run. Shit yep, that sounds money yep. So
to your point about like they couldn't work together, that was pretty much the
same reason I did that. And I was like, man, I must
stand back and acknowledge Gelati of Ye Gilattia. I think it is Gildi of
Rome, just tremendous. Let's go, let's get gelatto. Why do people
pretend glatto wasn't more delicious than ice cream? I'll never know. I know,
I know. Now listen and to me, listen to this. I
want to say this. Okay, for me, gelato is very much like
in an outbreaker. Overall, overall it is superior. But I don't want
it all the time, got it? I don't want it all the time.
I want it, you know, I don't want to abuse the privilege
you and ice cream all the time. Yes, yes, yes, I'm
willing to take the cheaper thing. You know. Very interesting because like because
because because if I have, if you have the superior thing on a day,
you're kind of not. It's like it's just it's like having a delicacy
every day. Yeah, yeah, it does it. It's you know,
because it's true you have to be in a mind to have the superior the
superior thing special occasion. We're going all out, yes, yes, you
know. Anyway, he said something about a lot. Did he even know
I said something talking about because it's not all about food. Uh, it's
fairly jarring. Seeing Warhol's Marilyn Monroe's piece next to someone decked out and wrestling
merch as someone as somehow the painting is more real. Saturday night, we
arrived about twenty minutes before doors open. I now must raise the point that
my wife, the hero of the story, the actual saint, has never
been to a wrestling show before. Like a typical well, your relationship is
about to be put to the test, exactly exactly. The crowd gathered around
the main door to the to the Now Center. That's what it's called the
Now Center. At the time it was called the wind Trust Arena. But
I don't know. Que's up waits patiently in line, and when the doors
open, we all move inside an organized manner. My wife is floored at
the civility, as she's used to dealing with drunk, belligerent, angry hockey
fans. We had decent seats Row ten opposite the stage. The wristbands were
kind of weird. Eventually I forgot A was wearing it at all in the
building. He didn't look all that special. And I do not know how
to trans how it translated to TV, as I have never seen the tape
of the show. We got a dark match of how many minute he both
seen the tape of the show either. I don't think there's only there even
is a tape of the show, of this show. No, they do.
They come out with DVDs. It's not a tape, that's true,
but a w is like they still insist on putting their shows out on DVD.
That's nice. Yeah, it's not tape. It's no. He's mistaken.
I hope he's remembering the right show. I think he is, because
let me look at the lineup he references here he's talking about. He says
there is, he says there is a tape. He says there is.
He's just never seen it. I'm talking about it. I'm talking about calling
it the now Arena, the now Arena you saw all in Its used to
be the Seer Center and half in the States. Oh but wind trust As.
We'll talk to Gabe about into tail here in a moment. It's in
the McCormick Square part of of the Chicago. I think it's south side,
it's not. That's not the same building. So he might have. He
might have he was in the Sear Center Now Arena, but he was and
he was in a different rate. Okay, we got a dark match of
a women's tag between Yuka and Rijo against Britt Baker and I can't remember who.
We also had some show okay. We also had some pre show nonsense
with SCU and the Dark Order, which featured the aw debut of Cult Cabana.
As for the main show, the opener was fine. Dustin was okay
at getting the crowd going, but otherwise it would have been dead. Darby
and Sammy was a lot of fun. My wife, who knew nothing of
any storylines or wrestling for that matter. I thought it was the best match
of the night. I was really surprised when the Elite match came up third.
It was fan fucking tastic. The golden trigger on Kenny into the kick
out at one. Yeah, that whole thing. I don't know. Do
I want to give away things? Not yet, but go ahead, because
he breaks down the matches. There pretty much a lot in the email,
right you mean read through everything he said? Right? Yeah, I think
that's fine. Yeah, I just don't add commentary. A revulsion that the
bucks would go there, following uh, following, followed by a shout of
joy when Kenny kicked out. Nobody gave a fuck about the women's match,
says this is the best tag match over in the US. I can introduce
you to one woman who thinks Dustin versus Jake Hager is better on this show.
That's amazing. Uh Cody, No, no, she said that it
was Sammy and Darby that was better. Oh, pardon me, all right,
just the same. Yeah, so no different if it was Dustin,
Oh, it totally would have been. It totally would have been Cody and
MJF was really really fun. Nobody could hear Cody's entrance music, which angered
some of the people in my section. I later found out nobody could hear
it because the performance was fucking terrible. Anyway, Yes, more on that.
Yeah, this is not a song that benefits from having the original artist
play it out thought. Yeah. No. As for the neck tattoo,
which made Oh this was the debut of the neck tattoo, I didn't really
realize that it was. Yes, that's what he's saying. Is so the
next tattoo WHI made his debute to Night, I thought he was wearing some
sort of rub on decal or something. I wasn't watching the in house video
screen, so it didn't occur to me that it was a a tattoo or
be so fucking big. The match was exactly what it had to be,
though MJF is fantastic. I saw Cody and Brandy the next morning as we
were on the same flight out of Chicago. Cody was sitting on the aisle
seat in first class, so the entire plane had to walk past him during
boarding. He had an enormous gray hoodie on hood up and looked completely and
totally exhausted. I had about thirty seconds standing next to him as I waited
it for the line to move, and told him that he did a really
good job the night before. He looked up, said, ah, thanks
man, I appreciate that. Then I went to the back of the plane
with the rest of the cattle. I noticed during the brief interaction of Gigantic
the tattoo was and how even the hoodie can't fully conceal it. Good guy,
that Cody Rose. I wonder if he'll make it one day. No,
so far and not so good. Orange Cassidy and Pack was infinite fun.
I had never seen Cassidy before and was blown away by the stick.
Everyone loved it and if it wasn't for the elite civil war earlier in the
evening, it would have been the best thing on the show Jericho and Max
was a bit of a letdown. Jericho wasn't in the best shape, and
considering he and The Murderer where my two favorites as a kid, it was
a bit jarring. I just saw Jericho at a w's Edmonton show last month
and he looks much better. See. I liked Jericho as pudgy. I
think it works. I loved that. I thought it was really fun.
He was the pain maker psychopath. Yeah, and especially with his sunken in
chest. Yeah, he's still all that. I don't know what he's such
as gear. I know what gear he's got access to. But he his
weight has fluctuated so much in aw it's like someone someone makes fun of his
physique and the next week he comes out and he's like thirty pounds lighter,
and then he goes he gets heavy again. It's it's like it's almost ridiculous.
Yeah. Yeah, if he's on nozem pic or what it is,
Yeah, maybe, Well it doesn't make it do that though, that's true.
It doesn't make you go back and forth and it's so brand new.
It's just the time it you know it, Uh, your appetite control.
Yeah, brawling in the crowd was all fining good. Oh no, he
said, Jericho's choir didn't translate well to those of us in the building,
and people just wanted to Judas on the PM. I loved that choir.
That the greatest it was. I'm surprised that. Yeah, we'll talk.
I guess I'll talk a little bit about it. But people like didn't like
it. There was like I don't remember seeing this on Twitter at the time,
but going back, there's a lot of negativity around the performance. And
it turns out the the woman whose front and center had like someone accused her
of sexual assault on Twitter, so we can't like her ever, But apparently
I'm not saying that from my own voice. Wait, she was accused of
sexual assault. She was accused. Yes, she was accused back when,
like, you know, and these have gone away for the most part,
I feel like, but when people would say, as soon as someone gets
in the spotlight blank assaulted me on this date, you know, and it's
like you have to believe them and get from there. But uh yeah,
yeah, so keep that in mind. I'm all about that. But yeah,
I'm okay with I take I file that under wrestling fans can't have nice
things. As soon as you find something that you feel like was kind of
transcendent and wrestling something I was like, Wow, that was really good for
wrestling. That was great, and give it. Give it like four weeks
and you'll realize that. Yeah. No, it's completely creetness in right act
involved. Yeah, there's some right, there's some bad, bad thing.
It happened before or as a result of it. It's like they injected a
ten year old with a with a syringe of heroin or something like that.
Yeah, it's it's like wrestling needs oneies ultimate example. You know, I
can't. I thought leaving that show, I had such a buzz. I
felt so great about being a wrestling fan, and just give it. Yeah,
matter of ten years, three years, three years, three years,
you just needed three years, come on, three years, you're right,
and WrestleMania twenty three years. It took. Wrestling fans can't have nice things.
It's not a business that attracts people that leave at the end of the
day a on balanced positive impact on the people. Nope, Nope, we're
talking about we're talking about the lowest common denominator of individuals, that's correct,
and those who are exceptions aren't voluminous enough to offset those who are the rule
No, no, nope, no get out and they get out too early
anyway to offset the Yeah, and just remember, wrestlers are all this is
the thing. Wrestlers are people who had no direction. Yes, and honestly,
if you want to become a wrestler, you have no direction, or
you thought you had one and you abandoned it and here you are. Yep,
you know, hey, you could be a wrestler. How many times
we heard that? Fucking that phrase passed around for you know, that's how
guys going in the business totally, especially look at the size. You know,
I know, guy's a wrestler. You you should, you should get
involved in you know. That's what it is. It's always that, Oh,
you could be, you could be, you could be. I was
a longshoreman. I was working the docks, I was loading trucks. I
was Sammy gabarus Is, I was working at subway. I have to hear
one more time, this kidden looking subway. I'm gonna fucking it's working a
subway and shove a foot long down my face for the second time today.
Can't stand his face either. He's got it he's got a kiss around him,
Disney his face, you know, his fucking like droopy eyes and ship.
There was only five years ago I was working at the Subway. Oh,
I can't wait to see your main event. Buddy. Hey, you
know what, how about in five minutes, I throw you in front of
the Subway Banana peppers with that TLC fucking extravaganza, sucking toss you over there
Subway in a pole match, fucking Sammy, guava and cheese and panada.
Here, idiot, he used to work at Subway. No, he's coming
off. Oh, I used to work it sold way. I still do
occasionally get a weekend shift. But enough from the island of misfit toys.
Oh it's coming, boss, it is. Can't come soon enough. Get
me some fun far away as far as the calendar. Oh, I know
right, I love it. I love it? Uh, Jack, Jack
is quite in Terrance. Brawling in the crowd is all fine and good,
but when you're in said crowd and the brawl is six sections away, it
loses most of its impact. I agree. If you're live, listen,
if you're live and they brawl in the crowd, it sucks. It's totally
always sucks. I mean, I think of WrestleMania thirty five when we were
there, It's like anything happened in the crowd, and we were up high
too, we were up fucking high. It still sucks. I must be
something. Did the wrestlers tell themselves about why crowd brawling is a positive?
Maybe there's some element of time killing it. I don't know what it is.
Well, we're thinking about television. Really it's not really translates well to
television, and you know, with the weaponry and the different contextual you know,
the miss on sound is what we're looking for. Scenic scenic opportunity,
scenic opportunity. I call for a moratorium. Let's see who's standing at the
end without weak ass crutch crowd brawling in their arsenal. By the time the
match got back in the ring and the drunks in my section had turned on
the match, and we're trying to start a fuck Goldberg chant. That's funny.
It put a dower on what was mostly a fantastic show. The day
after I flew home on an insane tinerary Chicago, Atlanta, Toronto, Edmonton.
Wow left Chicago at noon Central time. Did get to see Cody on
the area. You got home at eleven thirty mountain time, A twelve plus
hour travel day, a four airport grand tour isn't what you want to be
doing. In the very early days of the pandemic, clearing Canadian customs was
interesting. I was asked if I had traveled to Wuhan or anywhere else and
mainland child, that's all they wanted to know. Back in February. Yep,
yep, did you go to Wuhan? Uh? What? Yep?
He went? I saw It's right now this guy is saying he didn't know
it, doesn't know what Wuhan is. You could bring him in. Let's
le's have him padded down. I don't believe him. Who hasn't heard of
Wuhan? You Wuhan? Excuse me? You heard me. I didn't take
this guy. He's fucking up. Every time someone threw a chop last night,
they all said woo and it was with the hand. That's true,
that's true. Did you imagine you do Wohan go? Who? Yep?
These all these fuckers they're hanners. Remember that? Is that a cruise the
month before the law down And all they wanted to know was had you been
to China. Who's been to China? They thought they thought that that was
the only place people were gonna have COVID amazing. Yep, they told themselves
that for a little wife. Oh, they totally buy themselves like six more
weeks. Oh man. The moment, the moment that like, uh,
you know, I forget I remember. It was like it wasn't it like
West Coast isolated for like for like a moment, and then all of a
sudden and in the moment they were started to be like a case on the
East Coast. It was like a fuck it over his totally we're done.
It's totally over. We're done. Remember they had the cruise ship in New
York. Cuomo was like trying to become a hero, and yeah, I
put everyone on a ship and isolated he Remember remember when Cuomo was a hero.
Remember those things like God talk about the Ultimate Jesus Christ, everyone who,
everyone who became a hero during that time of lockdown. It's like a
total it's been totally disgraced. Yeah yeah, yeah, because they're because there's
no perfect one person you know that that's not remembered fondly for what they did
during that time period. Ultimately, they're perverts. That's a big problem.
That's what it comes down to. That's what it comes down to. Anybody
who's heroic to the masses is a pervert to one. That's a pretty fucking
profound statement, my friend. It's hard to become a hero without doing something
perverse along the way. Yep, yep, you're not. You're not.
Only you realize that as as an individual now you're not allowed to make mistakes.
Well no, I mean you're not. That's that's absolutely true. Right,
Well, you know you're allowed to make them. No, but you're
not allowed to decide for those mistakes. Not if you want to live a
normal life. No, you cannot make mistakes, nobody. It makes for
a fun like Twitter cause for the week. No, you have no chance.
You have no chance of overcoming the absolute uh void that needs to be
filled. Yeah, you know that, the hollow nature of that up,
that insatiable beast that is, you know, they need to have something to
talk about for a week and meme about and have one opinion about, and
then a different opinion about, and then a different you know, like shift
your opinion around, so you're always being contrarian. It's great we'ren't a great
time. Basically, It's true, it's getting a little better, but that
was during pandemics. I no one had anything to do, and so you
better hope it wasn't your fucking turn. You better hope it wasn't my fucking
turn that I was so I was so one thing that that that I'll never
forget was all the people, you know, because at the time, you
know, I was still working at the garden, and so I loved I
loved all these people who were like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
we're gonna get you know, we're back like two weeks. I'm like,
you're all fucking delusional. They were telling on themselves, you know,
they were like, you're fucking delusional. Their hope, their hopes and dams
were laid bare, and how aggressive their timetable was. When when something and
I was like, you know, when something like this happens and so many
people get infected so fast that the fucking world shuts down, no no,
no, no, new, new, new, new new. This is
going to last a long, long long time. I remember the earliest days,
people were saying it's gonna take eighteen months to see the other side of
this, and people were like, that is absolutely ridiculous. I cannot countenance
that. That's crazy. The vaccine is already in development, et cetera.
Talk about eighteen months. Yeah, totally right in terms of like imustoration of
coal, of course, you know, because like that's because it takes a
year, even fast track takes a year for a fucking you know, vaccine
to to to get all done. This is usually I mean, yeah,
it's less about that and more just about when people decide, well, it's
now time to see what happens if we stop taking precautions, and that no
telling when that's going to be. It turned out in this case to be
when fully vaccinated people were getting infected with like nothing, and that was like,
all right, fuck it. The summer of twenty twenty one, I'll
never forget it, and by the fall with Punk coming in full building in
September for his absolutely absolute no one cared after that. Now now it's like
any stranger, let's just get sucking. Hey, Hey, how's it going.
Yeah, yeah, let me lick your ball doesn't spread on surfaces,
surfaces like your taint? Yes, anyway, email whan Uhhan challenge. Two
days later, my wife was asked have you been to Maitland, China,
Ran or anywhere in Iran and Lombardi or anywhere in Italy hit International? Yeah,
international flights were a thing of the past within two weeks. Thanks for
reading my nonsense. Co Chairs an interesting show at an interesting point in time.
Absolutely forever in that ass And just finally from Steve from the Positively Pro
Wrestling podcast out of Chicago, Gentlemen, I attended aw Revolution at the Winterest
Arena in Chicago, Illinois, the last major wrestling show before the world shut
down. It's hard for some of us to remember the before time, the
time right before everything changed forever. I have a good memory of the days
and hours leading up to the show. C two e two. The Big
Comic con was in town that weekend as well, and the convention was directly
across the street from the arena, and as we're about to find out,
thanks to Gabe no small partner in making this thing happen in the first place,
right. It was an interesting group of cost players, wrestling fans,
and all in everyone seemed in a good mood around the arena. This is
the first time I can remember feeling uncomfortable around a large group of people since
reports a coronavirus started taking over most of the local and national news man.
Yeah, I think about that coursing through the minds of people in this building
when you watch this show. None totally, Yeah, none of us could
have imagined what would end up happening. But I distinctly remember thinking I was
on a crowded city bus heading to the arena and wondering, I wonder if
anyone is sick. In many ways, this is also the last AW show
that felt like the cool I used that term loosely. Is really nothing in
wrestling as cool placed to be. That's interesting. It was well known but
not overrun yet with weird wrestling fan tribalism, we fans bought into the idea
that we really were part of a revolution in wrestling, and that for the
fans, by the fans could actually be a thing. Of course, we
were all mistaken for when Cody unveiled his neck tattooed that night, you could
almost hear an audible groan from everyone, like is this wheel? Is this
happening? I'm still a big AW fan and watch it week to week.
Not everything is great, but I often find the good. Doubt weighs the
bad during their TV and pay per views, but it will never be the
same as that first year when everything was exciting and new. As for the
show, aw Revolution, I remember thinking it was excellent. Tag title Natch
and Darby Verse same were huge highlights for me and the live crowd. I
wasn't into the main event, but the rest of the crowd was, and
we were all happy to see a new world champion crowd. A few more
notes from being there alive. The light up bracelets we're only given out to
people sitting on the hard cam side. This cost measurement working the alf A
double, since it didn't look as cool as it would have had the whole
arena had them. Did you note in watching the show what he's talking about,
Boss, Nope, I'm going to talk about it in the Deep Dive
a bit. But it was in vogue. I remember I went to a
Tailor Swift concert at Gillette Stadium a couple of years before this and they handled
these out too. It was a super cool thing. They give you a
bracelet to wear. They don't have to, but I think you know most
people put it on and it's it's got a chip in there, and they
send via you know, yeah, I think r F I D. Sorry,
I'm still at the part. You went to a Tailor Swift concert.
Yeah I did. I did go. I like to see people who are
sensations do their thing in any in any media. And it wasn't it was
it was my choice. Yeah, I mean, I wow, Yeah,
she likes she likes music. But yeah, I mean, if if someone's
filling a stadium, I want to know why. Yep. That's how I
lived my life. And and so there I was, and they handed these
out, and I think it was through RFID technology. They send a signal
at a given time during the performance when they want to create a certain effect.
So the whole arena three sixty flashes in a continuous pattern, like and
everyone's wrist lights up different colors. Wow. And it's like sixty thousand people,
sixty thousand points of light. And the effects that you can create around
this stadium by sending certain colors in certain flash at certain times in sync with
the music was really cool. It's not unlike you know, synchronized fireworks to
music, or I think like the Christmas lights that people do around their houses.
It's kind of like that. Yes, it's kind of like that,
but it's a little more profound, and that it's sixty thousand of them in
a circle of a dome, and you're like, you're looking out on this
mass of humanity and it's it's it's it's all moving as if in succession,
and you don't even realize you're part of it, but it's all part of
the whole. I remember looking at them the manufacturer on the bracelet to figure
out who's selling these things, because I'm like, this is a money idea,
And I immediately, of course thought about wrestling and why they don't haven't
done this yet in a wrestling show, and of course, and I forgot
they tried it here at Revolution, but I haven't seen it since, so
I guess it wasn't considered worth the investment because it is kind of a bitch
to have to hand all these things out at the point of entry. Of
course, just for an effect. They're probably tracking me and listening to me
too, but that's fine, that's right, they are. So yeah,
he writes, this cost cutting measure I ended up not working out for a
double since it didn't look as cool as it would have. The whole mein
to had them it was a legit packed house, no open seats or empty
sections. Everyone was really looking forward to singing Judas as Jericho came out.
This is when it was still relatively new and organic, but a w and
I'm assuming Jericho overthought it and tried to make his entrance some grand special thing
instead of just keeping it simple and then ended up being a disappointment. Well,
after the chorus, they play the music the same they I know,
I don't understand why what the big deal was like. It wasn't like Cody's
where they never played you know, the song itself. You just had to
hear the live band. But then they sang it, and then they played
it like they always do when you can sing along like always. Yeah,
speak of that entrance. I sent you a DM on Twitter at some more
background. Okay, thank you as always for the laughs, the insight,
and the audio therapy as well as we all the audiotherapy we all need is
sick wrestling fans. That's correct, Yes, thank you for all comedia.
Brother, Thank you Steve. Great to hear from you, Thanks for your
efforts, and thanks for your missive. It helps color in our processing of
the TLF Hopper delivered aw Revolution twenty twenty here on that fucking cast and now
for sure we turned it over to Gabe, a long strong member of the
Solar System, to talk about not only why he chose this for the Hopper,
but the role he played as someone involved in the exhibitions business in the
comic book world in making A E W and C two E two come together,
joined forces and find a home for a show that aw kind of thought
it wanted to do around this point in the calendar, but until at least
to hear Gabe tell it, him and his organization reached out to A W
didn't necessarily have a when, where and how strategy for revolution. So we're
proud to bring you not just you know, our opinion on the show,
but a little bit of background information. I don't think anyone's ever heard before
about how the show actually came together in February of twenty twenty, right before
the pandemic. So we'll hit Gabe and we'll see you on the other side
of this break. Before we talk to Gabe, I just want to be
sure. I don't think do we have a death toll? Uh No,
I don't think anyone's gone honestly, because before Brody League came in. I
think that's it. Well, perhaps we'll notice as we don't think I don't
think that I didn't recall a death toll. I don't think so on this
one because Jr. Still alive and yeah, and so that about tells the
story. Yeah, all right, So here's Gabe as the Hopper is back,
contributing to TLF Cannon and we'll see you on the other side for our
deep dive of aw Revolution twenty twenty. Well, Boss, the Hopper always
pushes us out of our comfort zone. It's it's one of the reliable things
about it and almost always, Yeah, we're grateful for it. This this
is an interesting one, you know. The Hopper is about the winner's story,
Yes, around the event. It's it's not always about picking the thing
that you always wanted the co chairman to take a swing at from reaping the
archives. It's about what what unique perspective about the event can you bring?
And I think our guest, one of the the truest, bluest members of
the lapsed Fan Solar system, Gabe who prevailed, who is triumphant and the
return of the Hopper here in twenty twenty three has quite a nine hundred three
dollars and sixteen bitches. But who's counting. But who's counting besides us,
of course, is Gabe and and Gabe. Gabe's a veteran of the when
are you gonna When are you gonna tell your child that you gave part of
their college fund a way to us? Look, look, man, we're
not gonna Look, we're not going to talk about it. She's never gonna
watch wrestling. It's it's not gonna happen. That's more. That's more of
the problem. That's that's more of the problem. She's gonna say, you
fucking gave you gave my college education, my college tuition to these fucking clowns
talking about fake sports. Dad. The story, the story must be told.
I'm a historian at heart. I mean, before we get to the
story, I mean, you guys are talking about it, and of course
we're all well acquainted with with Blake from the Solar System as well, and
I remember he wrote an email to us and it really hit me hard.
It's like, and you know, when you spoke about your child and wrestling
fandom. I mean, Gabe, what are we supposed to do with the
fact that we are parents playing with the toys more than the kids? Yeah?
Yeah, you just gave me goosebumps. There, there's it's it's a
it's a conversation that I have often with my wife because and I found myself
and I don't know if you guys found this too. I'm my daughter is
four months old, right, so I'm very new at this since my first,
first kid. And what I'm discovering is that I'm I'm finding myself separating
more from the product generally just because I don't have as much time. Yeah.
Sure, and certainly I haven't been close to the product that's on television
much anyway. But like even the watching late at night of you know,
superstars, some random superstars from nineteen ninety one, it starts to get a
little like there's as you watch it, there's more self loathing because of that
thing in the back of your head that goes, you're a parent, what
are you doing? Yes? Like, and we are the first generation,
the first generation to have this feeling as it regards wrestling. Yes, I
should be I should be watching, you know, like if I'm up at
eleven o'clock at nine, everybody's asleep, I should be watching curb your enthusiasm,
not you know, the the ultimate warrior writhing on the matt with fake
black shit coming out of his forehead. I ask yourself, not only what
am I doing, but what am I reaching for? Yes? What is
slipping away? Right? Yeah? Yeah, And I think that's exactly why
I brought up that clip because I have such strong memories of watching that originally
on Superstars some Saturday morning at one of my dad's friends house, Like I
remember, like it was yesterday, and yeah, what am I reaching for?
You're absolutely right? What am I trying to get? Back? BLUs?
I cut you off there. You're gonna say something I don't remember now,
all right, that's all good. Yeah, Well, it's a w
revolution twenty twenty speaking about things we're going to be watching in the dark in
four years. Yeah, it's uh no, look, I'm gonna stop you
right there. Absolutely. So. I was about to say that Gabe is
a veteran of the exhibition circuit. He's he of course, came into our
lives when he was working at a comic book company that was one of our
very first sponsors here on the show. So he's been near and dear to
us for some time, and as I understand it, Gabe is Aw kind
of became a thing. And we certainly ran into each other at the first
star cast and the first all in and cross pollinated there in Shamburg things Loue
Melnotti's tip, by the way, I still remember that, yeah, uh,
the and I still remember the accent of the waitress as well. Thicker
than the pie and her stubble thicker than the pie in many ways was she.
But you know, when it comes to this kind of you know,
the indie spirit of of of in the comic book almost entrepreneur spirit of you
know, Kenny and the Bucks and and and they're sort of you know,
video game enthusiasts and comic book and fantasy and all this kind of your world
kind of clashed with what was that initial aw energy and I think in some
ways come a revolution to your home base there in Chicago. Uh, it
became a real thing for you where you were actually not just watching the show
and remembering it, you were sort of working it. Yeah, it was,
it's it's it's a it's a weird thing, you know, Like I,
uh, my dad, you know, introduced me to wrestling, and
and this is after my dad had passed, and I'll get to the story
in a second. But just like the idea of having a bit more of
a hand in it was just really intriguing to me, and so like I
often do, like I did back in twenty fifteen, when I convinced a
video game studio that makes billions of dollars a year to give you, guys
like fifteen grand for like eight weeks of sponsorship or something like that. Uh,
it doesn't happen. Uh, And you can't feel free to edit that
out if you want to. But what and I you know, and I
had to give you this much money to finally hit the uh thousand dollars club.
Anyway, I don't see a problem. Gave gave Game Minds his accounts
man, a checkbook ledger there, Yeah, no. Uh. My point
is is that it just if you don't make the ask, you never get
the answers that you want. That's right. And so before I get too
deep into it, though I promised myself I would do this. A couple
of days after I won the hopper my three dollars and sixteen cents about ten
seconds left in the in the contest. Fuck you if you don't have that
strors. I Uh, you guys put up the picture of Moxley over or
yeah, Moxley over Jericho's prone body in the ring, and on on X
or Twitter, whatever you people want to call it now and the fervor in
the comments. Gentlemen, I have to tell you I was absolutely blown away,
and so I have the receipts now and I'm going to call you all
out one by Wow, Scott Sudakov, yikes, I'll pay for this not
to happen. And I replied pretty directly to Scott and said, you'll shut
your mouth and you'll listen, just like a good boy. And you will,
Scott, I know you're listening. Uh. Let's see here. Uh.
The one that I was most surprised Christian Hollister. Yeah, he wasn't
about this man. He's so anti it's amazing away from the court essence of
what TLF was meant to be. They did a it's a solid doing TNA
and that blood and guts, but this isn't the TLF way. Don't take
advantage of the hopper folks. Let me tell you something, Christian, bless
you for giving them also all this money over the years. I love you.
I think that's great. I'm glad we like the same podcasts. You
should have nutted up and give them some more so you didn't have to listen
to this, because now you're gonna listen and you're gonna like it. Yeah.
Sometimes sometimes we gotta teach lessons about America. You know that's right now
that that's out of the way. Yeah, the reason I wanted to do
the show I will put everybody a bit at ease, and JP, I
apologize profusely for having to put you through this. But why does everyone think
I hate I hate a W. That's such a miss number. Well,
there's bits and pieces that you're absolutely going to hate. That's that's why.
I Oh, I'm not saying that. It's that it's a fucking exciting show,
but everyone's like talking about it. How I'm suffering watching a W.
I think aw's fine. Just don't watch You'll be two because I don't.
You know, I don't care that much. Yeah, I don't. Well
you know what, I don't. I don't even now. I don't even
watch it week to week. And I think again, I think it's the
kid thing. But long story short, and it's a very long story,
But I worked for like to what Jack was saying, I was working for
a company that that puts on large scale pop culture events all over the country
New York Comic Con, Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle, and and C
two E two in Chicago, which is kind of my home base and and
where I got my start doing this stuff. And you know, it's you
know, we see ninety thousand people across the weekend, and you know,
Marvel is there ninety three thousand people, you know, ninety three nine,
ninety three thousand, one hundred and seventy three people. Yes, that page,
it's I'm gonna be That's that's that's Turn, that's turnstyle, alright.
You know, you know there's never that many people in the room at one
time. Of course, anyway, huh, I h In twenty twenty nineteen,
Chicago's VIC Wrestling count as we all know, and our leadership really does
not understand wrestling because they're normal human beings, right of course, or as
close to normal as you can get when you're doing the job that we do.
Certainly not wrestling fans, so they have a lot more normalcy than than
I do, or my buddy Chris who also a wrestling fan, and we
we said, you know, it would be really cool. This aw thing
just got started. Uh, Chicago's MC wrestling town. What if we just
like reach out to whoever it is that handles bookings for Kenny Omega and the
Young Bucks to see if we can get them to a show. Because everybody
does a WW stars right, Wizard World was doing, you know, bringing
out the big stars, and they're very locked down because it's such a corporate
environment. It's like you get them for four hours, they won't do a
panel, like it's just four hours of autographing and photo ops and then they're
out right and so it was very kind of handcuffs things. It doesn't help
sell a lot of tickets. We thought, well, let's give this a
try. We reach out, We find out that the person that handles all
the bookings for those guys is Dana Massey, who's Matt Jackson's wife of the
Unbucks. And we hit it off pretty well and they agree and we get
the three of them to come to see two e two and we sell just
a boatload of tickets off their backs. In twenty nineteen, because wrestling fans
spend money, they were as you guys both know, right right, Yes,
such a such a misinterstood thing about the wrestling fan you know, yeah,
yeah, I mean look like all I mean it's a very it's a
very siloed sort of example or case stuff. But just look at you guys,
like it's just think about the business. Like but before streaming, before
the network, before peacock, like you had you had a sport here,
an entertainment enterprise that required you to spend fucking sixty dollars a month on pay
per views to keep pace, and people, hundreds of thousands of people in
this country did it? Sight unseen? What other sport do you have to
shell out that much money al cart to keep pace with? Like you know,
I don't, I don't care what the household income you know, stats
might tell you about other sports being wealthier that I don't care whatever, But
wrestling fans are willing to spend a greater percentage of their income on the sport,
correct than you know what I mean others correct, Yes, including bits
and pieces of their childs correct to their absolute detriment, and the gentlemen of
their families. Correct. Yep, that's that's the beauty of it. I
mean, because again, you are people wrestling fans are willing to sacrifice their
families and the people they love to spend money on this fake industry into an
entirely foe industry. Yeah, so, uh, we get them, We
get them to the show, We sell a bunch of ticket space off of
it. They in the convention business. If you see, you know,
some superstars at the show. Let's let's let's say it's like a real actor,
right, like, uh, I don't know the guy who plays Thore
or whatever is at a show. Oftentimes they come in on what's called a
guarantee. Essentially, what that guarantee says is that they take one hundred percent
of the sales of their photos and their autographs up until that guarantee, and
they'll take above and beyond as well. However, if say they're guarantee one
hundred thousand dollars and they only make sixty thousand dollars and photos and autographs,
the show is on the hook for the other forty k, right, So
they're guaranteed to walk out with that much money regardless. And when they go
I love and beyond the guarantee, then there's a split. I take it
for photos. Yes, for autographs usually they take one hundred percent. You
definitely have learned guy in his attention. Yeah, right, we go.
Uh they you know, the Bucks and Kenny absolutely killed it. They hit
their guarantee, their numbers in the first day because Chicago, they had never
done a show any of them before twenty nineteen, at least not a big
show where people the big show. What year are we talking about again,
Games twenty nineteen? Okay, so this isn't twenty. Is this before after
star This is before Starcast? No Starcast is eighteen eighteen, yeah yeah,
yeah, yeah eighteen, but after stay. Yeah, the Bucks, I
don't remember if the Bucks at a table Starcast. I don't think that they
did first one. I think they just had their there they read the story
that time or whatever, right, I remember that, that's right, Yeah,
Cody and the Bucks read the story. I remember that. Yeah.
So, uh, they hit their numbers on the first day, so they
were absolutely blown away. And you know what you learned very quickly when you
start doing this is like these celebrities are walking out of these these rooms with
like I've seen literal garbage bags of cash. Yeah, walking out of the
rooms. Yeah, because it's all it's all, it's all cash. I'm
not all that. Yeah yeah, yeah. So they had a great time.
Obviously, they walked out with a lot of money. They were happy,
and Chris my Buddy and I and and Dana Massey hit it off.
We were very friendly from then on. We talked quite a bit, and
while we were at the show, I just kind of made the offhander mark
of you know what, it would be really cool if we could have like
matches at the show next year, like do something with AW kind of just
off handed, like what if scenario right, Like that would be really cool
because you have the built in audience and whatever else. And so that idea
kind of stuck in our heads. We continue having conversations about it, and
in her sort of place as chief marketing officer at AW, she introduced him
to the right people to start kind of rolling this ball down the hill.
Now, this meant that I had to put together a pretty serious business plan
internally with my company to be able to justify, most importantly the rental of
an arena. Right. So c t E two, the show that we're
talking about is actually it's held in Chicago at McCormick Place, which is it's
the second largest indoor space in the world, largest indoor space in North America.
It's the largest conduction center in the States least at the time. I
think Las Vegas Convention Center is now bigger with their expansion, but uh,
this is getting a bit of needs. It's good to let me ask you,
when you know, when Kenny the Bucks come in and blow the guarantee
in day one out of the water, what's the reaction of people at the
company? Are they like, what the hell? Yeah, what's with wrestling
fans? Like they don't know what the hell this is about? Well,
and that's that's kind of the beauty of the thing, right, Like everybody
on our team, especially in leadership, like we we agreed to these guarantees
through these guys, and we're getting the side eye kind of constantly like that's
okay, we're coming out a budget here for for what for? Like these
wrestlers that we've never heard of, Like this isn't it's not stone cold Steve
Austin, it's not you know, I'm trying to think of other folks that,
you know, not going back to Hogan or whatever, but like that
that folks would have heard of it during this timeframe. I guess maybe Roman
Reigns seen at John Cena, Right, that's not those aren't the names that
people are used to hearing, like making the young Bucks. What does this
even mean? And so yeah, the whole time leaning up to the show
is just kind of like, all right, we'll give you this, you
know, enough rope to hang yourself, right, but don't don't you know,
don't think that it's going to get much further than that. And then
you know, they get blown away. It's and also you know, don't
don't don't think you're going to have a job when this ship's all over.
Okay, but we knew, like we knew Chicago, especially right like,
was going to come out for this. It's like an absolute no brainer.
And if we're because it's Chicago, right, like if it was you know,
a show in Seattle, like, no, of course we're not going
to bring them out here. No one gives a shit. You know,
it's that meat and potatoes audience that that you know, has that wrestling heritage,
right, it's a wrestling heritage market. So they hit and yeah,
so at this point the show's over and we have the leadership at the com
he has proof of concept now, right, they see that that people spend
money on the wrestling, and at least in Chicago, and they're willing to
give us a little bit more rope to hang ourselves. Right. So these
are comic book people, Yeah, in wrestling is pretty much the only thing
they could look down on. Oh yeah, without question. And I just
love it. I love I love the fact that like even comic book nerds
can be so about pro wrestling. That's how absolutely absolutely yeah, no,
it's it's one hundred percent. It's the it's the the lowest form of entertainment.
And I you know, I often have I often have a lot of
problems with it in my head because, like you know, I think we've
discussed before on on shows where I've been around, or maybe it was on
my thing that you know, such a large percentage of folks with developmental disabilities,
Uh yeah, loves professional wrestling because it's so black and white, it's
so easy to wrap their head around. And and you know, if if
if you're an alert and awake human being that considers yourself a wrestling fan,
and that doesn't grind your gears and bother you a little bit about yourself.
Then there's something wrong with you. Yeah, right, well you've lost the
plot. Yeah, you've entered. Yeah, so we uh we still you
know, Dana introduces me to a guy who you guys have probably heard of
before. He's actually been more in the mainstream lately. He was on Jericho's
podcast recently. I think he's on a panel at this star cast that they're
holding this week in Chicago. His name is raf Rafael Morphy. Raffael Morphy's
been in the wrestling industry for a long time. He was with DNA before,
he was with a W and before that he was with w W uh
w WF. And he's the guy he's with the World Wildlife Fun too.
He worked with the animals, He worked with the Animals and World Wildlife Fund.
Correct. Yeah, you know that that classic match between uh the Gorilla
and the Lion in seventy seven. Yeah, you know, I'm I'm I
actually prefer the ones between the Pandas and the and the Tigers. That's such
a classic, underrated match. Yeah for sure, though how boring I know,
I know, but it was entertaining. Yeah that's fair, that's fair.
Now, raf he's been around for a long time. He was actually
Also he's also like sort of and this is this, this is part of
what we've learned Chris and I have learned about like the industry, like RAF
is also like the like unofficially like Jr's like personal assistant tremendous. So he's
the guy who gets So he's the guy who gets him his pot. I'm
sure he gets him his pot, like I'm sure he does a whole hell
of a lot more for him. I assume that he hides. Nope,
we're not gonna do you think do you think? Do you think? Do
you think he gets him women? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yes he
does sauce fucking you know, he's like but JR Has one one request whenever
he gets an whenever, whenever he he rents a woman, which is she's
got to drink a bottle of sauce beforehand, so disgusting. Oh my god,
she needs, you know, she needs to riak of barbecue. Man.
I hope, I hope Daddy magic doesn't work. This work this back
to wrath if you're listening, but do me the favorite, like I'm the
guy that was backstays. I told you were great, told you I was
a fan, Like come on, like, keep this low key, all
right, anyway, I spent a lot of money on this. Don't get
me in trouble with Wrath, because I guarantee you he's the only one from
that locker room that listens religiously. I'm almost positive. Now we start having
conversations about like routing and where they're going to be at what times and when
they have in mind for new stuff. At the time, the company was
so new they hadn't even had a full cycle of pay per views yet,
they haven't even had the four papers year per year that they were working on.
And he lets it drop that they're thinking about having a pay per view
in late February early March. Anyway, Well, the C two E two
show in twenty twenty is to take place over leap year weekend, so it's
like the twenty eight to twenty ninth and the first and low and behold.
I was I was going to talk about this earlier. McCormick Place is part
of just a massive complex on the South side of Chicago, and in the
last three or four years they built like an eight thousand seat arena for the
DePaul men's and women's basketball teams to compete out of it. And it's part
of the McCormick Place complex, which means that my company has access to it
as an extra on the lease that we hold on McCormick Place for c tow
E two weekend. Great. So I'm starting to piece these things together in
my head, and I go, you know, like, what would it
look like? Not unlike, what would it sound like? It all?
Come on, come on, what would it look like if if we took
on the building, took on for Friday and Saturday? What does rent look
like? And then you know, with aw, they're new, you know,
I'm I'm sure at this point, like in this point in their history,
like as we're talking today, I don't think they would entertain this sort
of thing. But I don't know if you guys remember this, but very
early on in the company, they did this fight Yeah, thank you,
Yeah, I think it was I think it was a fight for the Fallen
was the first one with this show called CEO in Orlando or maybe with South
Florida or North Florida, but whatever. It was a video gaming show,
right, and they did a little show at the show in a small you
know, like a thousand or fifteen hundred seat arena, and that is what
kind of spurred in my head that said, hey, we could actually make
this happen, and I think it would it would go really well. So,
long story short. On the arena side, we talked to the mccarmick
lace folks, And when I say we, I mean I just started calling
people behind my operations teams back. Right, I'm the guy who sells the
concrete on the show floor. I'm not the guy who handles the rents,
the rentals or anything like that. So I'm just like trying to force this
into existence, right by figuring out if it's possible before I put together a
P and L profit and loss statement for my bosses. So I call around.
I find out that, you know, because it's it's a non people
are going to come in and set up on one day. In the second
day it'll drive revenue. So the rent on the arena is half the cost
for the first day and the full cost for the second day. And if
I remember correctly, and I'm almost positive these numbers are right, it was
seventy five bucks to rent out the arena for a day for loading and fifteen
grand for the arena rent on top of everything else on our contract for the
day of the pay per view right where we were going to generate tickets and
bring people in the door. And if that sounds low to you guys' ears,
it did to mind too, Like I'm going, seriously seat arena for
twenty two grand, you know, they're twenty twenty three five or whatever that
number ends up at. It just didn't register as possible to me, right.
Obviously there are other costs that are going to become involved, right like
union laborer and a V and electricity and internet and all of that stuff that
is ancillary and logistical and stuff. But the actual output cost right that we
would have to shoulder on our own, that read pop was around twenty three
grand, right, So no big deal, Like it's not too high a
number. So armed with this information, I put together a profit and loss
statement based off of ticket pricing for the last show that they ran in Chicago,
which was all out in twenty yeah, and that that year at Searcenter.
So I take the the pricing for the tickets. And generally when you
do a rev split with anybody that you're partnering with a promotion on it's usually
eighty twenty eight to the promotion twenty to the promoter, right, which is
what C tow E two would be in this case, because we're providing the
venue and you know, helping with marketing and all of that stuff. Based
off of that and a pretty I think I actually sent you guys an email
with like the estimates on production and labor and that sort of thing. The
P and L on our side came out after assuming assuming a seventy five percent
house, right, assuming a seventy five per house, the number on our
side came up with us in the black about like twenty two twenty three thousand
dollars after REV split and everything else presented into my leadership, they're like,
explore this further. We like the idea of this, let's explore it further.
So a series of phone calls with with Raff and his team on the
AW side, they're amenable to the REV split at eighty twenty because we're taking
care of the building and the REV split only comes however, after the payment
of all of the the extras, right, the feast for Internet, the
all of that stuff, the union labor, which is just a gigantic expense,
and I mean, you know this from I assume from working at MSG
just it's it's just a massive amount of money you end up going out.
You know, you're dealing with at least at this building, we were dealing
with three different unions, you know, like New York Comic Con. It's
seven, right because you know, from carpenters to audio visual to teamsters whatever.
But it was three different unions we had to deal with, and the
labor was high, and it's late on a Saturday night, so they're all
in overtime, right. But yeah, based on the estimates, everybody was
happy. We It took weeks and weeks and our legal team and their legal
team passing the documents back and forth to actually make it happen. But then
in in early December of twenty nineteen, everything got announced on an episode of
Dynamite that the show was going you know, AW is going to have a
booth at the show on the show floor at C two E two where the
wrestlers would come and do meet and greets out of their booth without, by
the way, guarantees because they were all going to be there anyway. So
it yet another way to sell tickets for us. It's just an added like
you see, it's just like additive at that point. And then the show
would be on Saturday at the wind Trust Arena, which is attached there to
McCormick Place. They announced the on sale is the wind Trust, the eight
thousand seat venue you mentioned, correct, Okay, yeah, same thing,
got it? Yep, yep, same place. I take full credit for
them having any relationship there. However, the on sale date is like two
weeks in the future, so they're you know, if they go on sale
this date whatever, we're uh, I remember it like it was yesterday.
We we the company that I work for or does these fan conventions, yes,
but there's a whole other side of the business that does like B to
B conventions, so like you know, pharmaceutical stuff or medical equipment or you
know, hardware, you know the sort of conventions that people just go to
that you know, you see them with their little dangly things with their names
on the Yeah. Business to business is business is selling the business. It's
not the public coming in. Yeah, it's people that are in the industry.
Look into Hey, you know this is the latest jet stream printer or
whatever the fucky by ten of them, commit to buying ten of them and
then yeah, sign this uh this promisory thing that you're gonna buy them and
then never buy them. Okay, yeah, that's that's that's what the biggest
part of our company does. And and then you know these little B t
C shows are just a little bit additive for them. Well, every year
in December they do this sort of like town hall where everybody gets together and
you know, the President's club is announced, like this guy sold more than
anybody else in the company and he gets to go to Cancun and uh,
you know, hurrah, here's what's happening next year. This happens to be
the morning that tickets go on sale for wind Trust for Revolution eighty twenty split.
There's like seventy six or seventy seven hundred seats that are upper grabs before
production holds are let go, right, Like, we know the inventory,
we know what the number is going to be. If we hit seventy five
percent, everybody's happy. The shows sold out in forty five minutes, exactly
correct. Chris and I. Chris and I were on our phones in the
back of the room at this town hall like refreshing. You know, the
little dots on the Ticketmaster thing we're refreshing and watching the dots disappear, right
and just like looking at each other like holy and like grabbing leadership and we're
showing them like you see the ship. Can you believe this? Yeah,
show sold out in forty five minutes. We sold you know, another like
three or four hundred seats as soon as the uh the holds were released and
production stuff was set and and the rest is history. Like it it It
was just really cool and like and and what I keep coming back to,
and I hope Christian and Scoot you're listening and understand now why I picked this
show. But it's what's important here is is is that message I think,
and and that if you don't ask, nothing cool will ever happen to you,
like and so you know, we were able to make this happen.
C two E two comes around. The whole teams is there on site.
We get to meet everybody, you know, they're they're all doing their thing.
We get a suite at the Wind Trust for our team and you know,
we get up there and it's all like it's just you know, completely
teared out and it's just so cool, right like the wall All right,
let's all right, what what what kind of food would Yeah? Yeah,
so uh there's a two giant sharcuterie boards right, like just just full of
of and it was okay, like you know, it wasn't it wasn't the
best sharcuterie I've ever had, but meatballs, wings, pizza, and sliders,
that's right, It's perfect. Yeah, it was great. Right.
So we're up there and and a full, fully stocked bar on top of
it, right, which is just like all right, works for me.
And so you know, there's two rows of seats outside of the glass of
the sweet and then there's three behind it. And so Chris and I are
watching from the front the whole time, obviously, and like the president of
the company comes up and he's like like I can't believe, like I've not
I this is really fucking cool. The wrestling fan among us like like what
what, Like I you know, I didn't know it was like this,
Like this is like really I expected like there was going to be, like
you know, because he's been pretty separated from all this because he's president in
the company, who cares. But it's like Chris and I are now the
cool kids in the building because we like wrestling and we made this happen,
right, Like that doesn't happen? Yeah, savor those moments when you get
them. Is wrestling, especially in a professional setting. It was without question,
regardless of the quality of the matches. And I will say this,
I think the Hangman and and and H Kenny versus the Bucks match so one
of the better tag team matches I've ever seen. The rest of the card
I think is largely forgettable, maybe with the accession of MJF and Cody,
but it was absolutely the best night of my professional life bar none. Wow,
because it was you know, you see, you know, months and
months of effort over something that you really didn't think you ever had a shot
to make make something like that happen, right, Not even so much that
that like you didn't think you could do it. You didn't think it was
possible that something like that could happen to you, because in what scenario is
this a possibility? Right? Like how it's not a question of could you
pull it off? It's a question of could you ever be given the opportunity
to pull it off? Right? And so it was it was very cool.
So what was what was the gate? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
no, I was getting there so uh about shortly after the second to last
match. Uh. The uh like rafts assistant and a guy from our team
that has experience in what's called settlement, and our finance lead and myself we
go backstage for what's called settlement. Get your visors out, kids, that's
right. Put put your put your put your wife, put your wife beaters
on, get your visors out, start fucking lighting cigarettes, and let's get
to business. Wrestling office. Uh. So we go backstage to the wrestling
office, Blake, uh, and we go into the room. There's there's
a guy at a computer. He does not have the little mini calculator with
the handle on the side and the visor, although as we walked in it
is exactly what I was imagining. So he's he's looking at the numbers.
He's seeing they went over a little bit on union labor, this, that
and the other thing. It ended up our cut ended up lower than we
expected it to be, and so our accounting lead had their own numbers right,
and they had to correct the numbers from the aw team raff and their
accounting side. It was off of about sixty six hundred dollars, which is
not much. It's whatever, but yeah, the gate that we took in
that that my team took from the twenty percent of the house after expenses was
thirty twenty seven hundred and seventeen dollars to thirty two thousand is twenty percent of
the house. So the total houses sometimes do the math. So what what
would what would the total house be? Uh eight sixteen twenty four two forty
two, two seventy seven two eighty two hundred eighty thousand dollars gate for the
ship? Wow? Pretty good, man, Pretty good. Yeah, it
was It's just you know, we we went back to our seats. The
show ended. They were tearing down the ring. Uh. We took it
like a group photo in front of the ring with the the ropes all kind
of dangling m and then Delando Chris, he looks at me and he's like,
you want to try to go backstage? I was like yeah, So
we just went backstage. We walked down, you know, the room's kind
of clearing out. I mean, I guess at that point it was just
like, well, we bought the building, it's ours. We can go
wherever the fuck we want, right right, So we walked down stage side
and end up backstage, and I remember distinctly, h Jericho walking by and
his head was just like a bloody hamburger meat, this disgusting mess. I
remember that distinctly. But we turned the corner and there's Dana and this Matt's
wife, and she has I've got pictures and everything they document this, but
she has the two. As you're watching the show, have you guys watched
the show already? Internet? Yeah? Okay, so as you were watching
the show, I don't know if you saw, but turnbuckles in the two
corners and two of the corners in the middle turnbuckle they say C two E
two on them. She had it arranged that they took the those buckles off,
one for each of us, and she ran them back stage before we
got a chance to get back there, and had the entire all the entire
all of the talent signed the turnbuckles. So so we have, you know,
in shadow boxes at each of our houses, the the C two E
two theme turnbuckles from the ring that night, signatures and whatnot. So yeah,
man, like it. The reason I wanted to do the show,
now, don't get me wrong, Like the last time I bid heavily on
a show, you'll remember was Summer Slim ninety four, which was the first
pay per view that I ever went to. Sure, yeah that was you
were saving up for that one and then someone beat you to the punch they
did, indeed, And this was always the number two in my head,
just because I didn't know if I would ever get a chance to tell the
story of this, and how how really cool to be able to be a
part of something like that was for sure, and how how honestly it probably
got me to the point of realizing that I want absolutely nothing to do with
working wrestling industry, because like, live events is hard enough doing this on
a weekly basis, Like no, absolutely, it's forty it's forty eight live
events a year. Absolutely not. It's it's a rare breed. That's why
like your Gary Jesters stay employed and and again you're your raft Morphy's and and
uh Ed Cohen was such a legend in the WWE for years. It's like,
uh, what's his name? Oh god, oh my god, I
feel so badly forgetting his name. The zame breslof you know, Oh,
these guys, these are rare breed of cats that are just like constantly booking
towns and buildings, and you know, like they leave like Zane Breslof was
famous for leaving when the first match started because his work was done. You
know, he didn't even sit there to soak in the building he helped fill
for ww DCW. He just wants trust because he's onto the next It's just
looks like a you have to have like the certain like rush mentality to do
that job. Very few can do it at the pace pro wrestling demands.
It's really interesting too, because I you talk about, you know, soaking
it in and enjoying the fruits of your labor to some degree, and I
and I don't know if this was the last time, but it was pretty
close to it. I'm sure because it used to be that when regardless of
where I was on my fanom, if you walk into a building and you
you walk into the bowl right and you look down and you see the ring,
there was always that sort of sucking in of your breath where it was
just like, oh, okay, yeah, this is awesome, right right.
I don't I don't have that anymore. Like when I go to a
show like there's no its I was like, okay, yeah, this is
that again. And I don't know if this was the last time I had
that because it was like mine in a way or not, but like it
certainly it was around this time where it kind of disappeared. That's sad.
Yeah, that's why I like. I like being in the audio. I
like being in the audience, you know, like for anything, not just
for pro wrestling, because it's like, that's a feeling that's that's not that's
not really something you should relinquish lightly, you know, to turn your passion
into something that feels so much like work and so sort of you know,
just to show up at the building and feel nothing. You know. Yeah,
it's just like I don't want to get there as a wrestling fem if
you've got a job in the business that has to happen in three months.
Oh you you, Oh, you have to I think, I think,
And that's you know, it's it's tragic, right, it's a tragedy,
but you have you kind of have to let go, and if you don't,
then you you become the you know, as timely as this reference might
be, you become the thirty six year old who dies of heart failure,
right, like, because you give yourself, you give too much of yourself
and maybe that's not what happened in that particular case, but I think it's
the same, the same thought possible plea. So well, what do you
member is the biggest pop of the night if you watch the show from front
to back, I think when when when Hangman hit the when that match finished,
when the Hangman and Bucks match finished, the crowd was so it was
so that crowd was so loud during that match that it had like people who
made so much fun of me and Chris throughout the process of this, their
mouths were agape. They were totally in. And that's the game, right
when I say when I say I think it's one of the better matches I've
ever seen live, certainly, but tags matches generally, all you have to
do is watch the people that were watching that had never watched, or maybe
hadn't watched in twenty years or had no conception, but we're you know,
Maud's gay, complete focus, just like could not turn away from it.
And I think that's all you have to all you have to see to to
know that it's something that that is beyond right. It goes beyond the scope
of of entertainment at that point, and I think there's there's still some of
that in the live spectacle of all of this, but like we're losing most
of it as we go. I mean, I'm it's really funny because the
relationship that I built, that that Chris and I built with with a W
as a result of this was you know, pretty long lasting. Obviously.
The other thing that I you know, I don't know how much you guys
are going to talk about in the run up, but this show took place
on February twenty ninth, twenty twenty. Like I said earlier, we had
about ninety some were between nineteen ninety five thousand turnstile attendees of this show on
this weekend. I thank God or whoever every day that that show wasn't a
super spreader, Yes, because a week and a half, a week and
a half later we were all working from home. Yeah. On the broadcast,
they're promoting the Salt Lake City Dynamite, which I always remember as the
last one before the lockdown. Yeah, but let me talk about let me
talk about blood and Guts a little bit. They talk about blood and Guts
too, which was which was postponed. Yeah, yep, uh we uh.
The the relationship had grown to the point where, you know, we
were having discussions with AW at the time of my company professionally doing like a
fan fest for them around Double or Nothing in May because the relation you know
earlier like earlier that weekend, we all my leadership, their leadership all met
to talk about the potential of doing that, and obviously that fell apart very
quickly because you know Pandemic, But Chris and I kept a relationship there,
and you know, we went and helped them out on a contract basis for
some of their fan fests as the years years of rolled on, most recently
even this year in May and Vegas or Double or Nothing, we helped them
put their fan fest together with their merch team and stuff and just as an
aside, and it's allowed us to have a lot more sort of view into
what happens behind the scenes and backstage and being there. And I'll never forget
this a fun little tidbit for you guys. We were at the first show,
the first pay per view post Pandemic, which was I believe Revolution in
twenty twenty one at Daily's place. It was the first time they had a
crowd back at Daily's place, and so they ran a fan fest adjacent to
the pay per view, and we were backstage, and I believe it was
it was the Dynamite before the weekend, and we're kind of just standing there
and we're soaking it all in, right, And you guys know, I'm
a pretty big guy. I'm six five, like three fifty three sixty and
my buddy Chris is also very tall. And we're standing around and nobody knows
who we are, right, We're just back there like trying not to get
anybody's way. And there's this big guy, like like like as tall as
me, really builds up tattoos all up and down his arms, he's got
some facial hair, and I don't I have no idea who this person is.
So which is weird because you know, I've been watching the product at
the time because I was, you know, getting to be a part of
it to some degree. And he walks up to Chris and I and he
looks us up and down and he goes, so, who the fuck are
you? That's exactly correct. Welcome to the business, yes, And and
we looked at each other and we're like, we're just we're here to help
with fan fest. That's all. Like, no he's like, oh,
I thought you I thought you were you were you were extras. That's the
word that they're used back stage for the for jobbers now, yes, yes,
and and we're like, no, nope, not at all, just
just here to help. Well, we realized later that night it's Lucasaurus without
his fucking man wow. And he's a real dipshit too, And I hope
and Daddy Magic you can tell him that it's fine. You can tell him
that I think he's a dip shit dip because of the attitude he gave you.
Or is there more Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, I don't
whatever. No, you know, a lot of the guys have been really
cool though, Like it's it's we just kept kind of looking at each other
and every time we're in that situation, just like this is stupid. We
shouldn't be here, This is just a dumb like Davis and butthead and the
next stage Yeah right, yeah, exactly exactly right. But no, it's
it's it's been really cool. I wanted to share the story about how this
went and like, you know, and maybe that's ego, but you know
what, fuck you I spent dude, don't like it, dude, it's
all about ego. Yeah, I mean, you know, if we're going
to talk about more contemporary wrestling, we might as well learn something about how
the business works today and you know, present something additive to the understanding.
You know, I think people see a contemporary show on the dock if they
just think, oh, look there's gonna deep dive this, like they're just
gonna do a match by match call of this, and so like, yeah,
we're going to do that, of course, that's yeah, it's the
mission. But we're adding to the understanding of it by by bringing perspectives that
otherwise, you know, wouldn't necessarily have a platform or or a platform that
that reaches as far as ours does. So oh no, I was I
kind of knew this about kind of your background already, and I was like,
I know where he's going with this. You though, it's it's it
might be an athemaut of certain members of the Solar System to see it,
you know, on their screens. I'm like, I understand what we're adding
here. So no, no, uh, no need for apologies at all.
Yeah, I certainly I my first instinct when I saw the Twitter,
so I kind of blow up. Was I sent you back an email,
It's like, do I need like, I'll change my pick. I don't
want people pissed wavered I did. I didn't. You know why because I'm
a nice fucking guy, right, That's why. That's why I see see
you're all right, See we I thrive on pissing people off. So it's
fine by me because you know, like, as much as we will lead
you all in the Solar system to the Promised Land, as much as you
can trust your co chairman to land on the fundamental truths about this business,
regardless of who it rankles, regardless of who it sends into an existential tizzy.
At the end of the day, we're also well aware of the fact
that we'll we'll never be able to know the best rocks to turn over in
their entirety. There's so much the Hopper has done in terms of, you
know, secrets of pro wrestling, in terms of Black Saturday, speaking of
our man, like even the Bashe of the Beach thing. I've talked about
this, the Bashe of the Beach two thousand stuff, which Dark Side of
the Ring just leveraged that we did. It was it was my paranoia that
one day a Hopper person is going to pick this and I'm not going to
be ready with the fucking documents that pushed me. So it's like that's the
magic of the hopper is It's like, it's it's almost liberating to say,
you tell us, because there's stuff out there that we're not going to land
on if left to our own devices. And you know, we did fucking
six years or whatever it was of our own devices after that first Patreon listener
request series, Right, yeah, we landed sounds some brilliant stuff from the
DA Journey of the World Class Journey star Cast, WRESTLEMANI all the rest.
But I and and you know, this would not be a gay discussion with
the last fan boys if he didn't blow you heartily before he let you go.
I and I've told you guys this separately via text message, you know,
or Twitter message or whatever. But the TNH stuff, like and I
know you've heard it from multiple sources already, so this is not going to
come as any any sort of major revelation for you. But the beauty of
that was, especially for those of us that had absolutely no interest at the
time in watching TNA or ever watching TNA, is that how much it it
It absolutely justified and made made real who who haul Cogan is? The the
the incredible research that you guys did, and the just how deep he went
with all of this was like it it may be my favorite of your projects,
like and for it to be higher than world class is pretty fucking impressive
because that work was incredible. But this is just it's so untapped and it's
so I think it's so relevant, especially to a certain age bracket, my
age bracket, those people that had haul Cogan bed sheets. Yes, it's
just it was incredible work and I'm really thankful that you guys put it together.
And now I'm really interested to hear what you guys think. And I'm
sure you'll address it at some point of this new Hogan shit with what is
clear cognitive decline. But I can't. I can't really call it anything else
because nothing else makes sense, not even him trying to lie about things.
There's there's clearly something cognitively wrong. Serendipity is incredible, it really is,
and you know that this magazine is something special. The true the true story
one, the true story, the unbelievable true story that the keyboord of there
is unbelievable available next to Woman's World and a checkout line near you. Oh
my god, hey, I bought. At the moment I fucking saw it,
I was like, what is this fucking nineteen ninety two? Give me
that fucking thing. Thank you both very much. This was awesome. I
really appreciate the time and the platform and everything you guys do is you know,
and if there's anything I can do for you guys going forward, don't
estate it's wonderful. Well, Gabe, thanks for joining us and bring it
on members of the Solar System. Let this service another proofpoint for the Hopper.
There is just we relish the chance for you to sell us on something
we would never cover. I mean, if the Hopper is going to do
if if the Hopper is to reach its true potential, it is to put
things in front of us that we otherwise wouldn't think to go at ourselves and
at place. If if you win, if you have the resources and the
passion to win, don't don't hesitate to pick the show that you want.
Of course, we're always going to defer to your taste and your preference for
it, but don't sleep on the possibility that you know you could you could
have us do something and learn something that we otherwise would would never tell ourselves.
We ought to about this uh, this wacky business. I mean,
Jesus Christ. We end up talking to Eddie Anddelman because of the Hopper one
time, I know exactly, and fucking Mike Lynch remember when he said remember
remember he said Don Morocco is from Everett. Yes, so awesome, And
then yeah, and and then thanks to Gabe and and and Mike there in
that case, you know, we learned that there are carneys and worlds other
than pro wrestling, and in fact sometimes even gets right. Oh for sure,
that's another podcast, But we can quit you. We'll get there one
day, because we're gonna keep the We're gonna keep the lines of communication open,
to say the very least. So Gabe, thanks for joining us,
and thanks for this installment of the Hopper. We'll talk again soon. Cheers, boys,